Making Sense of the Murray-Darling Basin Water Amendment Bill

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During its passage through parliament, the government’s Water Amendment Bill 2023 was subjected to almost 70 amendments. Deals were being made on the run. Nobody has a clear idea of how this massively amended Bill will affect farming, communities or the environment.

The Murray Darling Basin Plan can’t be changed without the consent of every State Premier. This government failed to follow that step, not only for the bill but also for these amendments that were introduced at the last minute. The Bill is a mess, the process is a mess, and it will leave a mess behind it.

The motion I put forward here is to refer the Bill to the relevant committee to try and make sense of the changes and see what else needs to be done to make the changes workable. The issue of the Commonwealth buying back water from a State that opposes water buybacks also needs to be sorted.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, One Nation continues to support a fair outcome for all those in the Murray-Darling Basin in Queensland and across the connected river system. The government last week advanced a bill that evolved drastically as it passed through Senate debate—some would say catastrophically through Senate debate. First, the Greens demanded changes for their support. Then Senator Van, Senator Thorpe and Senator Pocock added some tinsel for their respective ideologies. Much like a Christmas tree that the whole family decorated, it looks a bit crook. In fact, I would suggest that nobody knows how the bill is going to actually work. 

The council of water ministers dealt with the bill in August this year and failed to issue a communique, which is a record of proceedings that would ordinarily detail any specific approval or rejection of suggested changes to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan 2012. A communique is available on their website for every meeting, going back years, except for August. When I requested it, Assistant Minister McAllister failed to provide it, after first saying it was available. Instead, the federal water minister, Tania Plibersek, put out a political statement that an agreement was made between the federal, New South Wales, South Australian, Queensland and Australian Capital Territory governments to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full. Firstly, the ACT is not a state. It is not a voting signatory to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, so the so-called agreement reached was only between three of the required four states. Secondly, what was the agreement? I hear you saying an agreement was reached, yet no proof of that has been posted, beyond the minister’s statement. 

Did New South Wales sign on to allow as much as 700 megalitres of buybacks from New South Wales farmers, or not? New South Wales Premier Minns said in a recent press release that he did not sign off on water buybacks and instead only signed off on $700 million in federal money for water projects. Victoria has not agreed to this legislation and is not a party to the buybacks. They’ve made that abundantly clear.  

South Australia has not been honest with their farmers. I have not heard a word about the buybacks being planned from South Australian irrigators. I hear you say, ‘Hang on just a minute; the water is for South Australia.’ That’s true. The government is about to buy back water for South Australian river flow from South Australia. Their irrigators can wave to their water as it flows out to sea. I call upon the South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas, to answer a simple question: how much water did you agree could be purchased from South Australian farmers in that August meeting? How much, Premier? I’m hearing as much as 40 gigalitres is intended to be purchased from South Australia, which only has an irrigation pool of 400 gigalitres. That’s 10 per cent.  

Queensland Premier Palaszczuk has not said a word about water buybacks. With an election coming up next year, the farming community should know what the Premier has just done to them. But they don’t know; she won’t tell them. I ask the Queensland Premier to be honest and to come clean: how much Queensland water did you agree to be bought back into Queensland? I understand the game that all the premiers except Victoria’s are playing: ‘Don’t talk about water buybacks. Blame the federal government. Defend Labor’s vote against the Greens and the teals. Get re-elected. Shhhh!’ It’s such a simple plan—except that it breaches the rules around the operation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan itself. All state premiers must sign off to every change. The minute one state is out of something like water buybacks, the other states have to pick up the slack. 

My state of Queensland loses more water and without a further hollowing out of the bush. The Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers Bill) 2023 was heavily amended—and many of us say catastrophically amended. In the House of Representatives the water amendment had five crossbench and 31 government amendments. In the Senate the bill had a haphazard mishmash of 20 government amendments. That’s a total of 51 government amendments to a bill that was introduced to parliament, plus five in the Senate from the Greens and eight from the crossbench. That’s 20 amendments to the bill in the Senate plus 31 in the House of Reps, reflecting yet another bill brought into the Senate without adequate thought and becoming a scrambled me due to opportunistic trading and deals. 

This is no way to govern our country. It is shoddy governance. It is dishonest governance. And who pays? It is farmers, farming families, rural communities, regional Australia—everyone and anyone who eats. The reason there were so many amendments, including government amendments, is that the process of consultation was a complete farce. The government consulted with everyone they knew who would agree with them, and that was it. Irrigators in rural communities were ignored. The bill was pushed through a committee that the government controlled and was sent for a vote when it was so full of holes—51 holes that the government recognised. So the parliamentary process tried. The question remains: did we fix it? Did the premiers approve all these amendments? The amendments could not possibly have been approved. The Senate barely had time to read them. The premiers have most notably not even seen the amendments. The Environment and Communications Legislation Committee reported on what has become a very different bill. The premiers voted on a different bill—a bill they couldn’t agree on, and they haven’t seen the latest version. 

At the very least, we need to see how these amendments fit together and what the impact of these amendments will be on the Murray-Darling Basin, on the environment and on the communities in the basin. Potential harm from the bill needs to be detected now and plans for mitigation canvassed immediately. We need to determine exactly what the rules around changes to the plan are so that amendments are done correctly next time. We need to assess what happens when the federal government starts buying up water in Victoria and the Victorian government rejects or objects. This legislation may be a High Court challenge waiting to happen. 

As a new senator back in 2017, when I was in south-west Queensland in the town of St George in the Balonne shire I heard firsthand of the enormous damage to Queensland and northern New South Wales communities. As a result of that, Senator Pauline Hanson and I travelled the Murray from Albury to the Murray mouth, listening to regional communities in southern New South Wales, northern Victoria and South Australia. Later, when I returned to the Senate in 2019, I flew over the whole basin, listening closely to farmers, to communities and to people who had an argument for the environment. I then crossed the basin four times from east to west listening—in Queensland, northern New South Wales, central New South Wales, southern New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, including the regions of South Australia. We developed a credible water policy based on science and people’s needs, environmental needs and national needs. 

The late John Bristow was a world-renowned expert on water. He visited our country in 2007—I’ve read a paper he published on it—and he declared that we had the best water management in the world. He was an international water expert, and he said we had the best water management. Later, in 2007, John Howard as Prime Minister and Malcolm Turnbull as water minister introduced the Water Act 2007. As has been repeated four or five times now, the aims of the Water Act are: to include compliance with international agreements—what the hell has that got to do with our federal legislation?—and to change the Murray-Darling Basin Commission to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. That destroyed cooperation that had successfully managed the basin with cooperation between states and the Commonwealth. Commonwealth departments started to dictate and started to lie. John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull’s Water Act separated water allocations from land ownership—a catastrophe that has to be corrected. 

The Water Act, to its credit, required a register of water trades, yet the Liberal-National and Labor parties have refused to install a water registry, even though it’s required by the legislation known as the Water Act. I moved an amendment to require a water register to be developed. It was passed in the Senate and rejected in the lower house by the Liberals, Nationals and Labor Party. 

We now see that another feature of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is that it led to contradictions of science and nature. It completely reversed the science. This is a mess due to globalist policies, working through the Greens—the Howard-Turnbull Water Act of 2007. On his next visit to Australia in 2011, John Bristow proclaimed that Australia had slumped to the worst—the world’s worst—water management for one reason: politically driven policy. He belled the culprit. The people in this parliament, the federal parliament, at federal level. 

While mindful of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan’s catastrophic foundation, for now, as a result of the catastrophic mish-mash of the latest legislation changes last week, we need to scrutinise the latest legislation while keeping in the back of our minds the mess that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is. Only a committee inquiry can sort this out and ensure such a monumental, haphazard, dishonest change to a 10-year-old plan is the right thing to do. I move: 

  1. That the Senate notes that:
    1. the water Amendment (Restoring our Rivers) Bill 2023 was passed with substantial amendments; and
    2. the amendments were not reviewed by a committee and have not been approved by the Murray Darling Basin Ministerial Council.
  2. That the following matters relating to the Water Amendment (Restoring our Rivers) Bill 2023 be referred to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee for review and report by the 30 March 2024: 
    1. the operation, effectiveness and implications of the amendments made;
    2. matters relating to the approval of the amendments by the Murray Darling Basin Ministerial Council; and 
    3. any related matters. 
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Regional Queensland Ripped off by the South

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Record mining and agriculture booms from Central Queensland prop up government budgets in Brisbane and Canberra. Yet those same governments rip critical infrastructure funding for dams, roads and power stations out of regional queensland. The rip-off has been going on too long and must stop, regional Queensland deserves its fair share.

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Malcolm Roberts’ review of Labor’s first budget

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This budget will jack up power prices, keep inflation roaring to new heights and do nothing to help you from day to day. I joined Sky News the night it was delivered to talk about my initial reaction.

Transcript

Welcome back to our coverage of the budget. Tonight the Treasurer has laid out his economic plan, and while Labour has the numbers in the House of Reps, the Senate cross-bench will be critical for whether the government can pass its various measures. Here’s a reminder of the state of play: 39 votes are needed to pass bills into law. The government has 26, meaning it needs another 13 to get its agenda across the line. The Greens have 12 of those, with another five Senators representing minor parties, and one independent. Joining me live on the desk, is three of those crucial cross-benchers that could make or break the Labour budget. Senator Jacqui Lambie, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, and Greens Treasury spokesman, Nick McKim, great to see you all. Senator Lambie, let’s start with you. What did you think of Jim Chalmers’ first budget?

Oh, I have to say, they’ve played it very safe, haven’t they? It’s really is a mini budget. They’ve got five months up their sleeve, they’re buying time here. They’re gonna have to make some tough decisions by May. We’ve got a massive blowout in the NDIS. We’ve got the cost of living pressures out there, and I think we’ve just, I’ve just seen on the TV in the last five minutes, the gas prices are gonna go up 20% in two years. I tell you what, we are really under the pump in this country, and then we have a major deficit we’ve gotta payoff. That’s where we’re at, some tough decisions. They need to go back to the drawing board. It’s lovely, it’s all been touchy-feely. Let’s see what the May budget looks like, but they’re gonna have to make some cuts, and they’re gonna have to be tough.

Nick McKim, what’s your take on Jim Chalmers’ first effort?

Oh look, there’ll be a lot of disappointed people in the country, I reckon. I mean, this budget’s got more than a width of austerity about it. The government, and the Treasurer, have acknowledged the challenges, and Jacqui talked a little bit about those. I mean, they say they want wages to go up. Wages are gonna go down, then they’re gonna flat-line. They say they want employment to go up, but actually unemployment is going up. They say they want to be fair to people, but actually they’ve got stage-three tax cuts, which give a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks, overwhelmingly benefiting the top end of town. And people who are really struggling to make ends meet, are not getting much assistance at all in this budget.

Malcolm Roberts, is it a budget for the times, as Jim Chalmers argues?

[Malcolm Roberts] It’s a budget for the continuation, and falling off a cliff I think, because workers have already gone backwards 10%. Anybody who earns a wage or salary is going back 10%, and will continue to go back because we’ve got rapid inflation. Wages won’t move anywhere nearly as quickly. We’ve got high cost of living pressures. We’ve got high energy prices. Prices are forecast to go up 50% next year Kieran, and 50% the year after. People can’t handle that. That’s a doubling of prices. 100% increase over two years, that’s a doubling. We’ve got a climate change, there’s very few specifics. The housing, we talk about a million houses.

[Jacqui] Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I can see you nodding your head Jacqui, a million houses, how? Where’s the provision?

Yeah.

[Malcolm Roberts] We can see 20, $25 billion on climate. Well, 20 of it is on poles and wires. It’s just gonna increase the cost of electricity from far-flung areas. We’ve already got the poles and wires we need from coal-fired power stations. This is absurd.

With that rewiring the nation, that project that Malcolm Roberts is alluding to there, it’s $20 billion. A lot of challenges in terms of workforce and supplies in getting that done. Does that mean that power prices rise at least in the short term until that’s all established?

Well, this budget makes it very clear that, retail electricity prices will go up 56% in the next two years. So there is no doubt that we are facing massive pressures on household bills. I wanna talk a little bit about the housing announcement.

[Kieran] There were those numbers there. So you have 20% this year, 30% next year-

[Nick] That’s right, they have compounded.

[Kieran] -for electricity and gas. Yeah, that’s 56. And then the gas 20 and 20.

[Nick] That’s right.

[Kieran] As Jacqui suggested.

[Nick] That’s right.

[Kieran] So, we’re talking a massive hit to-

We are talking massive hits on household budgets, and what the government could have done is walk away from the tax cuts for the top end, and put in place genuine cost of living measures. They could have put dental into Medicare, mental health support into Medicare, done more on childcare, built more affordable homes, wipe student debt. Like there’s plenty the government could do. And the money was there. A quarter of a trillion dollars, $250 billion over 10 years overwhelmingly favouring the top. We’re all gonna get a 9,000; Jacqui, Malcolm, and I will all get a $9,000 a year tax break, and there is nothing in that package for minimum income.

Do you think there should have been direct support on power prices? Because obviously there’s this challenge with the inflationary environment right now, that if they write checks,

Yeah, the challenges.

they could have a counterproductive effect.

The challenges with this country over the years of both major parties have sold us out. We no longer own things. This is the problem. So, we’re relying on other people to generate our power for us, and that cost us a lot more money instead of leaving it in the hands of what we should have been as private investors. That’s where we were at in 2021. And that’s been really unfortunate. I don’t know what you do about those power prices, ’cause quite frankly, we have no control over the companies that run them. They can pretty much run amok all they like, and that’s where we’re at.

Should there be price caps or something of that sort?

Something needs to be done, whether it’s price caps or, I think Daniel Andrews is buying his lot back. Isn’t he in Victoria? He’s worked out, it’s costing them a fortune. He’s got no control over it. He’s buying it off. We have control over ours in Tasmania. We’re very lucky the state government owns ours, and they could give us, they could relieve that pressure as well by giving us cuts. They don’t do that, that is their choice. We pay a little bit less than the rest of you, but I can tell you now, this is where the state government of Tasmania is really gonna feel it, because there’s no way Tasmanians can afford for our power prices to go up 5%, let alone 20.

We’re talking of massive impact. What do you think? Should there be price signal or price cuts?

[Malcolm Roberts] No, definitely not. If you look at childcare, it’s increasingly getting more and more subsidies. The prices go up, whenever you subsidise something, people charge more for it. I mean it’s that simple, this is basic economics. Manufacturing will get really decimated by this. First of all, the cost of electricity is now the number one cost category in any manufacturing, any manufacturing. It used to be labour, labor’s not anymore. It’s electricity. What we’re doing is, we’re subsidising the Chinese to instal these parasitic mal investments. They’re kamikaze investments, solar and wind, to raise the price of electricity, everywhere in the world, where they’ve increased solar and wind, they’ve increased the price of electricity, startlingly. Manufacturing will be driven out of the country yet more.

What’s your read on that? Because obviously in the short term, there are challenges with transmission. The poles and wires that we spoke about, they need to be done to accommodate.

Absolutely.

But Malcolm Robert’s argument there, that it’ll just simply continue to drive prices up, renewables.

Oh no, I mean you could legislate to put in place price caps. I mean there’s a very common thing to do around the world, and I don’t accept Malcolm’s argument there. I mean ultimately…

[Malcolm Roberts] It’s in the figures, empirical figures all around the world. Every country, Spain, Germany, any country that goes heavily into solar and wind, it increases their prices of electricity.

I know Malcolm doesn’t believe in climate change, but the sciences-

[Malcolm Roberts] I believe in climate variability Nick.

absolutely have to to rapidly reduce our emissions in this country. And the best way to provide the cheapest power is more investment in renewables, and less into propping up the dirty, old coal-fired clunkers because they are unreliable. They’re old infrastructure, building new fossil fuel plants, including gas, is more expensive than putting in place distributed generation of renewable energy close to the centres of demand, supported by battery store.

The challenge in the the short term obviously, workforce shortages, supply shortages, these are all bottlenecks,

[Nick] They are.

in terms of that process, aren’t they?

Yeah, absolutely they are. And, now there was some welcome investment in the budget into TAFE and vocational education. I think that’s a good thing, but that does take obviously time to flow through.

Do you see Jacqui Lambie, I think you alluded to it earlier, but with this spending approach, Jim Chalmers says it’s 99% of the additional commodities, and tax revenue has been banked. Is this an attempt to say, “Okay, we’re not doing a Liz Truss budget, we’re gonna be responsible, and this is almost like a stepping stone to the May budget, where those broader changes might eventuate.”

Well, I think if you follow Liz’s Truss’s track, you’re not gonna last very long. That would be my my first point. But look, we’ve been really, really lucky with our commodities in this country. We’ve made a lot of money outta them. We don’t know if we’re gonna do that next year, the year after. We don’t know whether there’s gonna be a call for as much of those resources as around the rest of the world. I wouldn’t think there will be. We’ve had a really great year on that. That’s great. And we’ve all got a little bit GST extra outta that for our states, that’s a fabulous thing. We’ve seen that, I’m sure $360 million extra in Tasmania is gonna help us a lot. We’re only a small state, and that that will go to fixing things. But we cannot rely on this. We really need to look at those stage-three tax cuts. I believe that, those people in those lower incomes, certainly give them a tax cut, give them a bit of a break. It’s gonna be tough for them over the next few years. There’s no doubt about that. But people on the 120, a 100 or 1,000, where’s the cutoff to say, “You know what? We can’t afford to give you a tax cut at this point in time. Something needs to be done.” We can save billions of dollars there. There’s no doubt about that. I have to laugh about their TAFE, when they, they’re gonna chuck a billion dollars back into TAFE, Kieran, which is lovely. I’d remind the Labour Party, they cut $4 billion outta that education fund about three years ago alongside the Labour Party. So good on you for putting it back. Better late than ever. And I’ll be very grateful for that. But right now, we have a deficit and we cannot ignore that. And we have to start paying that back. We also have to pay up there for that NDIS, and something has to give here.

Malcolm Roberts, the Treasurer says that we need to have a conversation, a national conversation, and the tax needs to be part of that conversation. Where should we head in terms of the debate about the structural deficit? Because quite clearly, he’s identified the illness, not necessarily the entire cure this evening.

[Malcolm Roberts] Good question. First of all, we need the end, I’ll get into tax in a minute, but we need to end the black armband view of mining. Mining has pulled this country out of a mess for the last two years. And the coal prices were forecast in last budget are around about $60 a tonne. They’re $400 in actual fact, iron ore similarly, very much higher than they were forecast be. If it wasn’t for mining, we’d be well and truly deeper in the brown stuff. Now, tax, we need to make it simple. We need to make it, so that the multinationals automatically pay their tax. They’re not doing it at the moment. The Liberal Party in 1953 put in the Double Taxation Recognition Act, which basically made large foreign multinationals, not pay company tax, that’s absurd. The petroleum resources tax, that Bob Hawke’s Labour Party brought in the ’80s, made sure that the largest tax evader in the world, Chevron, pays not a cent, while they export billions of dollars worth of our natural gas. And we’re the largest gas, we’re the largest exporters of energy in the world. And we get bugger all for it here. We have the highest gas prices, we have the highest-

So do you think a profits tax, a super profits tax or something like that?

[Malcolm Roberts] I think you get back to basics, and you actually tax multinationals on the widgets they make. That’s an interim one. But we’ve gotta have a simpler tax system, bring it back to basics. We’ve got way outta kilter. It’s far too complex. The GST was supposed to-

New mines, new gas projects and so on. But this remains a lucrative transition fuel, does it not?

We have argued consistently for a corporate super profits tax. We have argued consistently for super profits taxes particularly targeted at fossil fuel companies. And I wanna make this point about taxation. In this budget, it was revealed tonight, that the petroleum resource rent tax is gonna bring in $450 million over the forward estimates, less than what we were told it would last year. We are in the middle of a so-called gas boom, and the big gas companies are gonna be paying $450 million bucks less tax along with the other companies. The petroleum resource rent tax targets less tax than what they were forecast to last year. It’s an absolute roar.

So obviously that’s your,

And it needs to be fixed.

that’s your thinking, in terms of where the Treasurer should start this conversation.

He could do that. He could walk away from the quarter of a trillion dollars, the $250 billion in stage-three tax cuts. That’s what they will cost over the next 10 years. Negative gearing, reform capital gains tax reform, which would stop these spiking house prices, which are pricing too many people out of a home. And meaning that at the moment, homes are like an investment class, rather than a human right. There’s so much we could do, and so many levers at Jim Chalmers’ disposal, and he’s basically pulled none of them.

[Malcolm Roberts] I think we might have found something that Nick, and I agree on, because the government is talking about, housing price is a simple matter of supply and demand, right Kieran?

Is is that a first by the way? I think it might be.

[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah, no, no. Nick and I have helped each other-

I’m worried, I’m worried.

[Malcolm Roberts] on quite a few things. Housing prices are a matter of supply and demand. The supply is up to the local governments, and some extent the state governments. Federal government’s got nothing to do with that. The demand, the federal government’s gonna shoot up by increasing immigration, 180,000 net, permanent.

No, now, just to be clear, we don’t agree on that. And I just wanna say about housing, the headline from the government is a million new homes. When you look at the fine print in the budget, it’s 10,000.

We’ve got two and a half minutes left, before we cross over to Paul Murray and his special tonight. Let’s get some final thoughts, overarching thoughts if we can, Jacqui Lambie to you as we wrap up this evening. What would you like to leave our viewers in terms of your assessment? Obviously, you believe that this is really a stepping-stone budget in many respects, and a lot of work to come over six months.

Yeah, I think it is a stepping-stone budget. They’re just dipping their toe in the water at the moment. They’ve got some big decisions to make over the next six months. And-

And is it largely around the NDIS? Is it your view that that’s the role?

I think it’s around everyone, everything. I am just gonna step forward here, and say that they’re giving the GST to the states, because they’re gonna expect those states to start giving some heavy lifting and they’re gonna say, “Hey, we gave you extra GST. You go fix that.” I reckon that’s exactly what they’re doing. It is not going to be enough. Our people are really hurting out there. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better, especially if we do go, we’re already heading into recession. If we hit a recession, we’ve got interest rates going up out there. Houses are losing their value. We’ve got many young kids that invested in them. We’re in dire straits going in, into the next 12 months, and they’re gonna have to make some really tough decisions for that May budget. And you know what, this is what we’re gonna say, “Is Labour made of the steel that it thinks it is?”

Malcolm Roberts, your final assessment as we wrap up?

[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah, they’ve completely missed the major points, A paper presented, I’ll read these figures. A paper presented to Cabinet, calculated the value difference in exporting bauxite, the ore, versus processed aluminium in ’19, $70. Just imagine what these figures would be today, exporting 1 million tonnes of bauxite, the raw material earned $5 million. Processed one step into alumina, earned $27 million, more than five times as much, processed again into aluminium, earned a $125 million, and processed finally into aluminium products, earned $600 million. If they’re fair thinking about manufacturing, they need to fix electricity prices and get on with the tax reform.

Malcolm thank you, and Nick McKim finally to you as we wrap up.

Yeah, sure. Look, I’ll be brief ’cause I know we’re nearly outta time, but in one word, disappointing. People voted for change at the Federal Election this year. They didn’t get much change in the budget tonight. It was pretty bland, pretty disappointing. It’s left an awful lot of people behind, but the top end of town are pretty happy with it.

Greens Treasury spokesman Nick McKim, Malcolm Roberts of One Nation and Jacqui Lambie, great to see you all. Thanks for joining.

Thank you.

Thank you Kieran.

Thank you for your company at home, here on our Sky News.

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Media Release: Hells Gates Dam Business Case To Be Revealed After One Nation Motion

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The Senate has voted in favour of a Malcolm Roberts motion this afternoon calling on the government to release a business case prepared for the Government by Townsville Enterprise Development Centre. Senator Roberts said:

“One Nation has scored a win for North Queensland with the Senate ordering the government to publish its confidential business case behind Hells Gate Dam.”

“The business case was given to the State Government in July and passed on to the Federal Government in September. The Albanese Government wants to keep the Hells Gate Dam business case a secret because they don’t want to build any dams in this country.”

“This business case will be especially embarrassing because the Labor Budget delivered last night removed $5.4 billion dollars previously allocated for the dam.”

“We need water for Queensland to thrive. This dam and many others should have been started decades ago so we can capture the La Nina rains which are currently swelling rivers before flowing straight out to sea.”

Only Labor voted against the motion in an attempt to keep the Hells Gate Dam business case secret however One Nation was successful by 40 votes to 19. The government must table the business case in the Senate no later than 9:30am tomorrow, 27 October 2022.

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Farmers always left high and dry by water allocations – MDBA Part 3

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When the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) allocates water to farmers at the start of the season, they do it based on a very conservative ‘extreme dry’ scenario.

This means farmers are allocated far less water then they should be. If the rainfall for the following season is above the extreme dry scenario (it very frequently is) the MDBA will allocate excess water to the farmers, but at the end of the season.

This end of season allocation is nearly useless to farmers as they need certainty from the start to be able to plant the amount of crops to match their water allocation. The MDBA seem to think they have a crystal ball and predict every year will be a drought. Farmers miss out, crops aren’t planted, small communities are slowly destroyed and less Australian grown food is on our shelves as a result.

MDBA questioning part 1: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/menindee-lakes-sdl-water-acquisitions-and-lock-zero-mdba-part-1/

MDBA questioning part 2: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/why-did-the-government-vote-against-a-water-trading-register-mdba-part-2/

Transcript

[CHAIR] Senator Roberts, I believe you have one question before we release the agency.

[Senator Roberts] Mr Reynolds, you gave us a statement here at Senate estimates on 28 May 2021, and I’ll just read from that:

Finally, the March rain has delivered a more positive forecast for the next irrigation year compared to the same time last year. Indicative opening allocations for next year under a conservative extreme dry scenario are …

Then you gave us the releases. In fact, the rain in that period was well above average, with some areas experiencing record falls. This is from your website. Even the area in red is now blue. I’m not blaming you for the weather forecast, by the way. Dam levels are from 92 per cent. It seems that farmers always start with minimal water allocations and then later, after the season, farmers get offered some more that farmers can’t use. So farmers have missed an opportunity to make more money. Surely this has to stop. Who provided the ‘extreme dry’ scenario? When was it changed to ‘pouring down’, as in this year? Did the use of the ‘extreme dry’ scenario cause farmers to lose early season water allocations?

[Mr Reynolds] No, it doesn’t. When we do our analysis, we model a range of scenarios. I don’t recall exactly the words in that statement, but I would have quoted from one of those scenarios, which was extreme dry—very conservative. States, under their allocation frameworks, provide the allocation to irrigators. The MDBA’s role is to advise the states on the volume of water they might expect to have under a range of scenarios. States adopt a conservative approach to allocating water to make sure they don’t over-allocate early in the season and are unable to deliver it later in the season—that is a much poorer outcome. When the MDBA provides advice to the states on the water they might have available, we provide them a range of scenarios, not just the extreme dry, and they work within their own allocation framework on where they actually make an allocation decision.

[Senator Roberts] On whose advice do you base that consideration?

[Mr Reynolds] The MDBA does the statistical analysis of projected inflows for the season and develops those estimates of the volumes of water that might be available to each of the states, applying the water sharing arrangements that are specified under the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement. The states then use their allocation frameworks and their assessment of the appropriate level of risk in making allocation decisions.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you. Chair, we understand that there was a discussion about Yanco, which I hadn’t intended asking questions about. We’re going to evaluate the Yanco decision, because it is significant to us, but I’m not going to ask questions.

[CHAIR]: Thanks, Senator Roberts.

/by

Menindee Lakes, SDL water acquisitions and Lock Zero – MDBA Part 1

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The Murray Darling Basin plan has been a disaster for regional communities. Overwhelming complexity, water being flushed out to sea and bureaucrats thinking they know better than everyone else have caused enormous damage.

Despite the evidence, the government and MDBA refuse to take responsibility for the mess they’ve made.

MDBA questioning part 2: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/why-did-the-government-vote-against-a-water-trading-register-mdba-part-2/

MDBA questioning part 3: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/farmers-always-left-high-and-dry-by-water-allocations-mdba-part-3/

Transcript

CHAIR: Alright; thank you. Senator Roberts, over to you.

Senator Roberts: Mr Taylor, I’d like to reference an exchange we had at a previous estimates regarding Menindee Lakes. I’ll quote from Hansard. I said:

So, Menindee Lakes is a vital component of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan?

You said:

It’s a vital component of our environmental management of the system.

Then I said:

And it’ll stay there.

You said:

And we’re actually getting those golden perch out of that system, connected through the Great Darling Anabranch, down into the Murray and distributing those fish. They become callop, as they’re called in South Australia, and they travel thousands of kilometres over their life. So, this is a critical part of what we’re doing.

That was not an answer to my question. You dodged my question, so let me try again. Will the Murray-Darling Basin Authority keep the Menindee Lakes as an environmentally important wetland having the same area as it currently has, including water storage with the current capacity, with the level, of course, decided by basin inflows? This is Queensland water, and we’d like to see it used properly.

Mr Taylor : Not sure I’m in a position to answer on behalf of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority in terms of feature plans and management. I think the other thing is that the Menindee system is a jointly managed lake and water resource, jointly managed between New South Wales, the Commonwealth, South Australia and Victoria. So I’m not in a position to talk about—

Senator Roberts: Is anyone from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority who could answer that question here?

Ms Connell : Mr Reynolds.

Senator Roberts: Will Menindee stay as it is, a vital part of the environment?

Mr Reynolds : As discussed earlier, New South Wales is scoping, or rescoping, the Menindee project, now called the Better Baaka project. That anticipates changes to the Menindee infrastructure and the operating rules for it. As departmental colleagues explained earlier, we’re yet to have a scope of that project brought forward by the New South Wales government. I can’t give you the assurance that you’ve asked for because that rescope project will inevitably change arrangements at Menindee Lakes. I think the proposal for the project is to look at how things can be done differently. If the project proceeds, then I think the circumstance at Menindee will be different to what they’ve been in the past.

Senator Roberts: So you can’t give me—

Ms Connell : It will continue to be subject to water resource plans and water sharing plans which will contain requirements in relation to environmental measures and environmental outcomes.

Mr Reynolds : Absolutely. The project in terms of its development will have to consider environmental impacts and benefits that can be achieved ultimately, but, until we see the scope of the works, I can’t advise on what the changes on the Menindee arrangements would be.

Senator Roberts: Setting aside the sustainable diversion limit acquisitions currently underway, how much water is still required to complete the sustainable diversion limit acquisitions? I’d like a figure. Secondly, how much is required to complete water acquisition, the baseline diversion limits?

Ms Connell : We addressed some of those questions this morning. The 605 sustainable diversion limit adjustment measure program is made up of about 36 projects for which a gigalitre component was identified when those projects were conceived. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority will go through a process we refer to as reconciliation in the lead-up to 1 July 2024, and I’ll let Mr Reynolds talk you through that.

Senator Roberts: Okay.

Ms Connell : Earlier this morning we provided an update on progress towards the 450 in terms of current entitlement holdings that are with the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, projects that are contracted and projects we are in discussions with states over.

Mr Reynolds : In terms of the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism reconciliation process, the authority is required to take a decision in December 2023 as to whether or not a reconciliation is required. That decision can’t be taken earlier than that, because states are able to advise notifications to modifications of projects up until that point in time. So we won’t have clarity about what the package of works looks like until that point in time. If, on the basis of our understanding of the projects, their progress and the condition they’re likely to be in in June 2024, the authority determines that the adjustment amount is likely to be different than what was determined in the original decision, we will undertake a reconciliation. We will assess the projects as they are notified at the end of December 2023 and make an assessment of the volume of water, or the offset that they will achieve at that point in time.

Senator Roberts: You have a document on the website of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority entitled ‘Progress on Water Recovery’. Under the heading ‘Summary of surface water recovery progress’ it states:

Following the amendments to the Basin Plan, the overall target for water recovery is 2,075 GL/y plus 450 GL/y of efficiency measures by 2024.

That’s 2,525 in total. And then, on the third page, under the heading ‘Total water recovery still required’ it is just 46 gigalitres.

Ms Connell : We addressed those figures earlier this morning as well. The gap bridging target under the Basin Plan is 2,075 gigalitres—2,100, and I think five gigalitres have been recovered and are held by way of entitlements with the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. So 98 per cent of the target has been reached, but there remain about 46 gigalitres across the basin that need to be recovered from different water resource plan areas.

Senator Roberts: The other comment Mr Reynolds has already covered, so thank you for that. Before I move on, how much water is required to complete the baseline diversion limits, the up-water?

Ms Connell : I guess there are three overall programs. There’s the water recovery target of 2,075 gigalitres, so there’s 46 gigalitres still to go there. Then there is the 450 up-water program, as it is known, which I referred to earlier in terms of what’s being delivered, what’s contracted and discussions we’re having with states. Then the third program is the 605 sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism program, which Mr Reynolds was discussing in terms of the reconciliation process that happens in 2024. There are 36 projects which go to make up that program of work that South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales have to deliver, and the authority will look at that program of works at the end of next year to determine whether reconciliation needs to happen to identify whether the 605 will be met or what component of it will be met.

Senator Roberts: As I’ve discussed before with Mr Glyde and Mr Reynolds and also the previous water commissioner, it’s a very complex issue, isn’t it? The whole thing is very complex, with many variables and a lot of variation.

Ms Connell : There are some key, major complex areas of work. The Basin Plan is a significant water reform, and there are some complex components, as you would expect in a system, I think, where there are 20 surface water areas and about 13 groundwater systems.

Senator Roberts: Then we have a naturally variable climate. The north varies considerably, in a different way from the south. So I would raise that for the future. Turning to the south-east drains SDL acquisition, Mr Reynolds, a reminder of your answer at the last estimates:

The water from the south-east drains has been put forward by the South Australian government as an SDL adjustment mechanism project. So the water that comes from the south-east drains into the southern lagoon will be accounted for through that process.

That means it will be counted as SDL. How much water is the Murray-Darling Basin Authority counting against the remaining SDL target for the south-east drains restoration flow?

Mr Reynolds : As we’ve explained previously, the assignment of individual volumes to projects in terms of the adjustment mechanism can only be an estimate, because the whole package of projects is modelled as a whole, and they interact with one another. We have made a range of estimates against individual projects. I will see if I can get the number for that particular project. I don’t think I have it in my papers here. I will have to get someone to provide that to me, but I will provide it this morning.

Senator Roberts: I would be very interested to see that number. I’m wondering if we’ve just found some more water.

Mr Reynolds : Well, the south-east drains project is part of the adjustment mechanism, so it’s been accounted for.

Senator Roberts: It is my view that this is a significant unaccountable flow—it hasn’t been to date—and may provide a substantial part of the remaining SDL acquisition that can both take the pressure off farmers elsewhere in the basin while restoring the amazing Coorong wetland and moderating extreme salination in Lake Albert by flushing from the south-east, not from the north-west; from the north-west is not really flushing. Have you the south-east inflows? I think the answer was ‘no’ in the last Senate estimates in October. Have you modelled the south-east inflows, both aquifer and surface flow? How much water is available? How much can be redirected—and this is really important—without interfering with agricultural production?

Mr Reynolds : We haven’t modelled that directly. The South Australian government manages that part of the system. We have consulted with them about the volumes. There’s not a direct estimate available of the total flow from the south-east drains, including through the groundwater systems into the Coorong. The operation of the south-east drains does provide water back to the southern lagoon in the Coorong, and that scheme has been developed and the operating rules have been developed to achieve that. There are requirements to manage the flows through the south-east drains. It is drainage from agricultural land. It does carry a nutrient load. There are particular management challenges with that water. So part of the south-east drainage scheme passes water through wetlands and the like to remove nutrient loads from that water before it enters the Coorong. If that’s not done, there are undesirable ecological impacts in the Coorong itself. That limits somewhat the volume of water that comes from the south-east drains. The South Australian government is continuing to work through those issues.

Senator Roberts: As I understand it, the drains are made by humans? They’re not natural and they take up a significant quantity of water, straight to the ocean.

Mr Reynolds : The area that’s been drained naturally was a low-lying marshy area, and water tended to lie in that area. Some of it would have seeped through groundwater systems to the sea. Some of it would have made its way to the Coorong. The drains are man-made structures that have taken water from that area and dried it out and made it more productive as an agricultural area.

Senator Roberts: I’ve been there and seen those drains. They’re definitely man-made. There is a belief that there’s a significant amount of water to be recaptured and sent to the Coorong.

Mr Reynolds : And water is being captured through that system and does flow to the Coorong. I think from memory it’s in the order of 26 gigalitres, on average. Obviously it would change with seasonal conditions. In wet years it will be more; in drier years it would be less. But it’s of that order.

Senator Roberts: My understanding is there’s a lot more water to be captured than that.

Mr Reynolds : I think the South Australian government clearly has an interest in trying to improve the health of the Coorong. They’ve undertaken an enormous amount of work in that region to do that. I’m sure they’re examining whether or not it would be beneficial to take more water from that region if it’s possible to do so, for that purpose.

Senator Roberts: So the Coorong problem has been man-made, not by the rest of the basin, but by diversion of water that used to go through the Coorong straight to the ocean? I’m not being critical, because in those days they were trying to look after their narrow scope. That’s something that, to return the environment to its natural state, would require a lot of water to go back to the Coorong and keep it clean.

Mr Reynolds : There are obviously significant volumes of water diverted from the basin, which has reduced the volume of water that reaches the end of the system, particularly coming down the Murray. Part of the challenge is to address some of those issues. To get back to the natural balance of what happened in the Coorong before river regulation would require all of the water that’s subsequently been diverted to be returned to the environment. No-one is proposing to do that. We’re looking for alternative solutions and alternative balances.

Senator Roberts: Shouldn’t that south-east portion be counted as part of the basin? You just said water is diverted from the basin, but it’s not included in the basin yet?

Mr Reynolds : I’m sorry; when I said that I meant water is diverted from upstream right across the basin. Very significant volumes are diverted.

Senator Roberts: This water’s going straight to the ocean, and doing damage by not going through the Coorong.

Mr Reynolds : I think the benefits that can be provided to the Coorong, by diverting some water from the south-east drains, are being realised through the project that’s been implemented. I’m sure the South Australian government and others will continue to examine where additional benefits might be able to be accrued. Significant money from the Commonwealth government has gone to the Goyder Institute. I think $8 million has been committed to examine options and other interventions that might be possible around the Coorong, Lower Lakes and the Murray Mouth. That could include activities within the south-east drain system, although that has been explored fairly extensively already.

Senator Roberts: It’s very complex, and it’s made even more complicated by the politics involved at the state and federal levels. We will end it there for now.

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but could you make this your last question? Sorry, Senator Roberts! We knew what was going on.

Senator Ruston :They don’t look anything alike.

CHAIR: They don’t.

Senator Roberts: I don’t know who you’re insulting the most. That was my last question.

CHAIR: Make this your last question, Senator Roberts.

Senator Roberts: Concerning Lock Zero, in the last estimates, you spoke about engineering challenges and other issues, and you said, ‘Lock Zero was examined in some detail.’ If salt water is used in the Lower Lakes to protect against sulphur emissions—and that would be a one-in-100-year type drought; it’s an absolute last resort—then suddenly we will be wishing we’d built Lock Zero, won’t we? Doesn’t the Murray-Darling Basin Authority or the department have documentation on Lock Zero? Your comment ‘examined in some detail’ suggests such documentation exists. It seems like too significant a project not to have some formal process underway.

Mr Reynolds : During the millennium drought, Lock Zero was considered as to whether or not it would be an arrangement that would help protect the Lower Lakes. Part of that was looking at what flow would be required past Lock Zero to ensure that the Lower Lakes retained their ecological character. There is significant concern that if the flow of fresh water to the Lower Lakes was terminated, and if just sea water was allowed in, that would progressively concentrate through evaporation and become hypersaline, and so the Lower Lakes would not be a natural estuary.

Senator Roberts: It’s not natural at the moment, with the barrage, is it?

Mr Reynolds : No, but the Lower Lakes naturally would have had a much larger volume of fresh water flowing to the Lower Lakes, to the end of the system. We take a lot of water out upstream for irrigation and other productive purposes, and so the natural balance of mixing of fresh and salt water at the Lower Lakes cannot be reinstated unless there’s a lot more water coming down the river system. Building Lock Zero does not alleviate that issue.

Senator Roberts: We’ll leave it there for now.

/by

Why did the Government vote against a water trading register? MDBA Part 2

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Speculative water trading is a blight on our country. Even still, the Water Act 2007 specified that a transparent, public register of water trades should be established. 15 years later, we still have no public register.

The most recent attempt to establish a public register, my amendment to the Water Act, was voted down by the Liberals, Nationals and Labor. The question is, what have they got to hide?

MDBA questioning part 1: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/menindee-lakes-sdl-water-acquisitions-and-lock-zero-mdba-part-1/

MDBA questioning part 3: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/farmers-always-left-high-and-dry-by-water-allocations-mdba-part-3/

Transcript

[CHAIR] Senator Roberts.

[Senator Roberts] Mr Reynolds, as a senator for Queensland, I have to cover many issues and, although I’ve travelled the entire Murray-Darling Basin, have overflown it and crisscrossed it many times, in listening to people I just can’t keep all the acronyms and numbers at hand. I just can’t keep them in my head. Fortunately, we have many farmers who watch these Senate estimates sessions in particular and they let me know when I’ve missed the details, and they’re excellent auditors. They know, from being on the ground, when I’m getting nonanswers. They tell me, and they’re blunt auditors. It seems to me that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is now avoiding the numbers for both acquisition and total targets. The Murray-Darling Basin—and Senator Patrick knows this—is all about numbers. The plan has reduced farmers’ businesses, rural communities and Australia’s agricultural capacity to a set of water numbers, supposedly, for the environment. Getting those numbers is like pulling teeth, and I welcome Senator Patrick’s partial success on the 605 earlier. For the rural community watching this at home to get a hint for the future, I’d like to ask again. I’m asking for three simple numbers. How much water has the government acquired so far under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan? How much is under acquisition? How much will the shortfall be against the plan in the absence of further projects, and where do you intend to get that water from? The third question was two combined.

[Senator Davey] Senator Roberts, do you mind if I throw one in as well to complement yours? From the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, how much actual wet stuff allocation do you have this year? There’s the difference between the entitlements you have, but this year the allocations may be over the 2,750 gigalitre rule. Who knows?

[Senator Patrick] And the costs associated with each of those [inaudible] too.

[Senator Davey] We want to know everything!

[Senator Roberts] We do.

[Ms Connell] I’ve lost track of the question! I’ll just provide the headline numbers, and then I’ll ask Mr Taylor to come to the table and talk to what he has available in this water year. In terms of surface water recovery, as I said before the break, 2,106 gigalitres of surface water has been recovered and is now held in entitlements by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. In relation to groundwater, 35.3 gigalitres has been recovered. In relation to the 450, two gigalitres in entitlements have been returned to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. We have another 16.4 under contract, and we are discussing arrangements in relation to about another 10 to 15 gigalitres with the states. In relation to the 605 gigalitres, the concept of that program of works is to—in lieu of 605 gigalitres being recovered from the consumptive irrigation pool, there are a suite of 36 projects which deliver environmental benefits in lieu of that. The framework under the Basin Plan requires the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to have a look at the end of next year at the progress of those environmental projects and the extent to which they will contribute, from an environmental measure, towards the 605. It is quite a complex concept.

[Senator Roberts] It’s very complex.

[Ms Connell] Yes. I do appreciate that. In terms of the current holdings that the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has to utilise this year, I’ll pass to Mr Taylor.

[Mr Taylor] This year, we have new allocations, up to 31 December, of 2,054 gigalitres. Up to the end of that same six-month period we have used 1,038. So we’ve used about half our water for this year at halfway through the year.

[Senator Davey] How much did you carry over from the previous year?

[Mr Taylor] The previous year’s carryover was 738 gigalitres.

[Senator Davey] That would have made available this year 2,7—

[Mr Taylor] 85.

[Senator Davey] Thank you.

[Ms Connell] I will just note that the department does have a webpage that sets out these water recovery targets, so we’d be happy to provide you with that information.

[Senator Roberts] We will come asking if we need more. Minister, the South Australian water storage is outside of South Australia—

[Senator Ruston] Yes, for geological reasons.

[Senator Roberts] We’re not complaining about that. South Australia’s a valid part of the plan. This is a national plan that includes—

[Senator Ruston] Thank you very much, Senator Roberts. We’re very delighted that you would think that.

[Senator Roberts] While we’re concerned about wasting our water, we’re not concerned about supplying South Australia and Adelaide, in particular, with water—

[Senator Patrick] It’s not Queensland’s water [inaudible].

[Senator Roberts] Well, we can argue that—

[Senator Patrick] It’s national water.

[CHAIR] Let’s not get into that.

[Senator Roberts] I’m not interested in getting into that. I’m just saying that South Australia has a right to that water. It’s longstanding.

[Senator Ruston] Everybody in the Murray-Darling Basin has a right. We can go into a discussion about ‘riparian right’ and the like but the plan outlines that this is a shared resource that has to be maximised to the benefit of all people in Australia.

[Senator Roberts] We want to protect the South Australians but we also want to protect the environment and we want to protect all the other stakeholders. It gets messy. It’s had a long history; some argue it is ingrained in our federation. South Australian water storage is outside South Australia, at Dartmouth, which South Australia partly funded, Lake Victoria and Menindee Lakes. Menindee Lakes has held water eight years out of 10. Even though government raised the natural banks a little to create a larger storage, Menindee has been a natural wetland since before Western settlement. Menindee stored South Australian water and local—

[Senator Ruston] They’re ephemeral, aren’t they?

[Senator Roberts] You could argue that, but they have stored water eight years out of 10. Menindee stores South Australian water and local irrigation water. While that water is there it sustains the amazing wetland around Menindee. And that has developed to counter natural climate variability. In Australia, the climate is more variable than in probably any other continent. But we wonder why a frog near a coalmine is an environmental matter of national significance yet 47,000 hectares of wetland is not. With 220,000 bird movements a year, it is a national treasure. And now the testimony in this place is that the state and federal governments are going to murder Menindee. The Murray-Darling Basin is murdering an environmental treasure to come up with water to meet environmental targets. That just doesn’t make sense to me.

[Senator Ruston] I don’t think there would be anybody else in the room who would agree with your term ‘murder Menindee’. That is a highly emotive way of describing how, collectively, everybody is trying to work together to engineer a solution to ensure the long-term sustainability of the river system whilst dealing with the social and economic implications of water recovery and the like that minimises any detrimental impacts. The sole purpose of the plan was to protect the amazing riverine environment, so I cannot accept your terminology around what’s happening at Menindee. At the moment, we do not have the submission back from the New South Wales government in relation to the proposal for activities at Menindee. Until we can actually see that, I don’t know that anyone could be making the kind of assessment you’re making. I acknowledge that you accept that the plan is for all Australians, particularly all those who live in the basin, but you are picking on one particular component of it and suggesting that it is environmental vandalism when at this stage we don’t really have any clarity around what is going on there. We need to be really careful that we don’t compare what happened prior to the development of the river system and what is happening now. There has been so much intervention along the river—through dams, locks, weirs and all sorts of infrastructure, including the urban build-up in towns—that it’s almost impossible for us to do anything apart from assess what’s before us at the moment. I would counsel against talking about what Menindee Lakes used to be like and what the Lower Lakes used to be like because so much has changed in the years since irrigation has occurred along the river. So we need to manage what is before us now.

[Senator Roberts] I accept that. At the same time, a fundamental target for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been to restore the Coorong, and that cannot be restored while we’re avoiding the science. But let’s move on to something else—

[Senator Ruston] It’s really about the words that you use. We seek for the Coorong to be healthy. Does that restore it under the true definition of the word ‘restore?’ I would suggest that that is very difficult. I mean, the barrages are there. They weren’t there.

[Senator Roberts] The barrages are there. The drains are there.

[Senator Ruston] Yes. When we talk about ‘restoring’, what we want to see is a healthy Coorong, a healthy Murray-Darling Basin system. We want to see environmental assets protected. But we also want to protect the river communities because they are such an important part of the economy of Australia and all the people who are supported by it. I think we need to be careful of the words we use because we don’t want to give the impression that somehow we’re going to turn the river system back to exactly what it looked like before there was any intervention. What we’re seeking to do is make sure the environmental outcomes are good.

[Senator Roberts] One thing that is very frustrating in the parliament is that so few decisions are made on data and science. They’re made on emotions, whims and looking after vested interests. You said everyone wants to protect the environment. I’ll get onto more of that in other questions. Minister, I have trust for you, so I’m not having a go at you. I’m having a go at several governments in the past and possibly this government. I don’t have much faith in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan because it’s not based on data. We don’t measure much of the river system, yet we’re allocating water. An ABC report was entitled ‘Basin states agree to support ACCC Murray-Darling Basin water market reforms to regulate brokers and market behaviour’. Last year when I moved an amendment to force the water trading register into life, which is a requirement of the Water Act 2007—the one that the Murray-Darling Basin has been required to produce since then—the Liberals, Nationals and Labor voted against it. I was told there was no need for a water trading register. It’s just speculation. There is no profiteering and no need for a register of water trading. What changed so that the states are now taking action?

[Senator Ruston] I’m not sure that I agree with the fact that the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Labor Party last year thought there was no need for—

[Senator Roberts] They voted against the amendment to bring in the water register.

[Senator Ruston] Yes, but there were a number of other complex technicalities around what was being proposed at the time, so I don’t think you can naturally jump to the conclusion that the government or the opposition didn’t believe that water regulation could potentially improve the operation of the river systems and improve the operation of how water traded. I think possibly it was that the mechanism by which you were proposing to do it was not something that we were necessarily agreeing to. But I’m happy to take that on notice and get you some more information because I have to say I can’t remember exactly.

[Senator O’Neill] Senator Ruston, just before you continue. Is there any chance that the document Senator Roberts was referring to could be tabled?

[Senator Ruston] That’s just a media story, isn’t it, Senator?

[Senator Roberts] Yes, this is a media story from the ABC. They’re talking about a mandatory code of conduct.

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, would you like to have that tabled so others can refer to it?

[Senator Roberts] Yes.

CHAIR: Thank you.

[Senator Roberts] It just seems like this code of conduct is a way to smokescreen their reluctance to have a water trading register. It’s a way of avoiding the issue.

[Senator Ruston] I might speak with the secretary. In terms of the ACCC review and implementation I wonder if you could give Senator Roberts a bit of an update about where that’s at. We could see if in any way you can alleviate some of the concerns he appears to have.

[Ms Connell] Water trade and water markets are principally the responsibility of state jurisdictions at the moment, so states and the ACT are responsible for having and maintaining water registers. Each of them does have a register in place. In terms of the media release you’re referring to, it was to indicate that the water market reform process had been set up. Minister Pitt announced last year that he would appoint a principal adviser. Mr Daryl Quinlivan has been appointed to work with states to take what is a very significant report by the ACCC—I think it goes to about 700 pages and makes a broad range of recommendations—

[Senator Roberts] It has some serious concerns.

[Ms Connell] That’s right. Mr Quinlivan has been working with Basin states, supported by an advisory group, and consulting stakeholders more broadly to determine what should be the initial recommendations that are progressed. We can table a copy of Mr Quinlivan’s December advice. The advice sets out the five principal initial reforms that he recommends be progressed, and the basin states support recommendations in principle. Critically, at the moment there’s no code of practice to govern the behaviour of water market intermediaries, water brokers, so one thing the states agreed to is the development of a code that can put a compliance framework around the way that part of the market operates.

He also recommended that the Commonwealth introduce legislation to prohibit insider trading and market manipulation, so that’s something the department is looking very closely at. He made recommendations around collection and publication of trade data and a number of other recommendations. He is now working with basin states and stakeholders to develop a final draft which is due to the minister in June this year. So, the terms of reference for the work that he’s doing are on our website and we can provide you with a copy of that as well.

[Senator Roberts] Ms Connell and Senator Ruston, can you see the public and farmers, in particular, are very concerned? I haven’t discussed this with you, but apparently you had a successful business with flowers. Water is key to that, and you’ve developed remarkable efficiencies in the use of that water, as I understand it. I’m not a farmer, but I know listening to farmers that water is like gold. It dramatically increases the productivity of farmland, so it’s worth a lot of money. But it’s also worth a lot of money to traders and speculators, and we’ve removed the connection between water allocations and farmers’ property ownership.

[Senator Ruston] You’re talking about the unbundling of water from land?

[Senator Roberts] Correct; I am. What I’m saying is that, in the absence of significant measuring of water flows right across the basin, in the absence of science, the contradiction of science and the highly variable climate, which is natural—and we’ve got the north being different from the south, and people not understanding each other—there’s a lot of suspicion that the government, and governments in the past, have simply protected water traders because we still don’t have a water trading register. Whether that’s a state and territory issue, it needs to be done. And now we’ve got the ACCC saying there are significant concerns even though they didn’t identify any particular fraud. This does not build confidence in the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, nor the plan.

[Ms Connell] I think there are three components to the question. So, under the constitution, states are principally responsible for water resource management, so the obligation is on them to establish and maintain water registers. Each of the Murray-Darling Basin jurisdictions has in place a water register at this point in time.

[Senator Roberts] I’m not interested in why we can’t do it; I’m interested in what we should do.

Ms Connell : It’s being done—

[Senator Roberts] It’s a major impediment to you.

Ms Connel l : and you can get access to those registers online. I think the Bureau of Meteorology now aggregates information from each of those state registers in their water information portal, so we can provide you with the link to that quite easy to use website.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you.

[Ms Connell] I would just like to get on the record that the ACCC didn’t find any evidence of speculative activity.

[Senator Roberts] I just said that, but they had significant concerns.

[Ms Connell] One of their key recommendations was to get in place a code backed by enforcement and compliance powers to improve the integrity and transparency of the market, and that’s what the basin states have agreed to and the principal adviser has reported on. We’re now working with basin states to look at how we can develop that.

[Senator O’Neill] But it hasn’t happened. What’s the date for that to commence? Senator Roberts, I’ve got a whole lot of questions that I want to follow up on. When you get out there and talk to people, as Senator Roberts has said, they just tell you straight up about—

[Senator Roberts] The corruption.

[Senator O’Neill] The corruption that’s happening. Their computers aren’t fast enough to compete with people who are in the space. You would’ve heard it as much as I’ve heard it. What’s the timing on the response to this?

[Ms Connell] We’re currently working with basin states to look at the development of a draft code. One of the key things will be to consult with stakeholders on what that draft code will look like. When making changes that will impact on a regulated community it’s important to undertake a process whereby we publish a proposed draft code, provide an opportunity for comment and also provide a period of time for that regulated community to come into compliance. We’re actively working with states on progressing that proposal.

[Senator O’Neill] But do you have a time line?

[Ms Connell] I can take that on notice; I don’t have it in front of me.

[Senator Roberts] I brought eight copies of an article from News Weekly, ‘Murray-Darling Basin Plan ruining the Edward River’. Once again, we’re talking about environmental damage of a type never before seen along the Murray system, caused in all probability by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The first paragraph of this article says:

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP), which has the goal of protecting the environment—

As Senator Ruston said—

is instead destroying it.

And there are so many examples; it’s the same type of damage that we’re seeing elsewhere. We’ve raised this about the Murray itself. When is the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, or the department, going to convene a proper public inquiry into environmental destruction along the Murray River system? Landholders along the Edward are just flabbergasted at how much damage is being done in the name of the environment.

[Mr Reynolds] The Edward system, in effect, runs parallel to the Murray. Part of the work we’re looking at around the choke is how we manage water through that part of the system, and that includes water through the Edward River as well. Clearly, there are a lot of demands on the system to manage it for consumptive use as well as for the environment. One of the key things we’re looking at as part of the Barmah Choke Feasibility Study is how to manage the system holistically, not just moving a problem from one part of the system to another. So there’s a lot of activity to examine the Edward system as well.

Erosion is a natural feature within our river systems. We have a heavily regulated—

[Senator Roberts] Excuse me; some people would disagree with you. They’re saying the amount of water and the duration of high river flows are quite unnatural. Farmers along the Murray and people along the Edward are saying the same thing. That’s what’s doing the damage, according to them.

[Senator O’Neill] Exactly, that’s what they’re saying to me too, Senator Roberts.

[Mr Reynolds] There’s no doubt that we’ve regulated the river system to achieve a whole lot of benefits which that provides, but that has substantially changed the natural flow patterns in the river. We have higher river flows through summer because we’re delivering water to meet irrigation demands which are critical to the prosperity of many communities throughout the basin. That’s one of the aspects of the Basin Plan: we work through that balance between environmental outcomes and the social and economic prosperity of communities throughout the basin as well.

There are going to be impacts on a regulated system—there’s no doubt about that. We’re looking, through the Barmah Choke Feasibility Study work, at options we might have to alleviate some of those pressures on that part of the river system—the Edward, the Murray and, indeed, the Goulburn system as well. I can’t say that there are no impacts on a regulated river system, but I guess those impacts are balanced against the other benefits that they provide to communities in a wide range of—

[Senator Roberts] I’m not accusing you—and I mean this sincerely—or anyone here of anything. Government in this country—and I’m not talking about the Morrison Joyce government, I’m talking about federal governance—is quite often about wealth transfer. The more regulation we have then the more that can be hidden. It’s built into this, the whole thing. There are just so many avenues for it to be loose and sloppy and the people who pay, time and time again, are the everyday Australians who pay for the mess in government.

I’m not having a go at you; I’m not looking at you in particular. I’m just saying that this is a mess. How can we sort it out so that the people and the environment stop paying the price for mistakes?

[Senator Davey] I think that finishing that choke study might be a good first step.

[Mr Reynolds] In that part of the river system, in particular, there is significant work, investigation and analysis on how we can manage some of these detrimental impacts while still achieving the good impacts that people are looking for.

Some of the impacts we’ve seen in terms of high river flows and the river flowing at higher flow rates, or at least at levels higher than it has in the past, are the result of lost capacity in the river system and the deposition of sand within the Choke. That means to get the same volume of water through the Choke and downstream that we had in the past, the river needs to run at a higher level for a longer period of time. That’s absolutely the challenge that we’re dealing with. The work that we’re doing to understand that, and to understand the options we have to take the pressure off the river system, is a critical part of that intervention.

[Senator Roberts] I’m saying the core problem may be something even deeper. Thank you.

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Just add water – Farming saves Australia

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The figures don’t lie, Australian farmers have saved the economy from a recession. While the government will always try to take credit for a good news story, I made this speech back in September celebrating the true heroes of Australia, the farmers on the ground.

Transcript

I recently spoke on mining exports keeping the Australian economy out of depression. Today I’m addressing the other good news story: agriculture. In the last 12 months, wheat prices are up 33 per cent, corn up 57 per cent, canola up 72 per cent, sugar up 65 per cent and—the one the Greens hate the most—cotton up 45 per cent. It’s not politicians keeping Australia out of a depression; it’s farmers’ hard work and resilience. Drought and cold from the current solar minimum are reducing crop yields worldwide.

At the same time, the drought in many places in Australia has ended. Prime Minister Morrison and Treasurer Frydenberg are taking credit for a strong economy that’s none of their doing. For years this parliament has been making life as hard as possible for farmers and irrigators. In 2019, One Nation asked this parliament to provide a measly 200 gigalitres of water from the Hume Dam to keep our farmers going through the drought. Labor, the Greens and the Liberals and their sell-out sidekicks the Nationals, teamed up to vote down our motion. As a result, the basin winter crop in 2019 failed.

Here we are in 2021 and the Murray-Darling Basin from Queensland to South Australia is at a high 80 per cent of water storage capacity. Hume and Dartmouth hold 5,700 gigalitres. The water the politicians said wouldn’t be there because of climate change is there. This parliament fails again. For weeks now up to 20 gigalitres a day of water that should have gone to farmers has been sent out to sea at the Murray mouth. With Lake Victoria’s storage full and Menindee filling quickly, flooding in the lower basin is a real possibility—and still farmers along the Murray and Murrumbidgee are receiving only 30 per cent water allocation.

At these crop prices, is this parliament mad? Give farmers their water and let them grow food and fibre to feed and clothe the world. We have one flag. We are one community. We are one nation. It’s time now to allow every Australian to lift themselves up through our own initiative

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Do you feel like government spends your money well?

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There have been massive increases in debt in the last 12 months, without the necessary objective data to underpin them. That shows, yet again, poor governance of our country. When you take in government charges, rates, levies and fees as well 68% of someone’s average income is taken in tax. That’s working from Monday to mid-morning Thursday to pay for government.

Transcript

Senator Siewert’s motion is that the Senate notes that the Morrison government’s 2021-22 budget left people on low incomes behind. I would go further. This budget leaves the whole country behind, and that means it leaves everyone behind. There have been massive increases in debt in the last 12 months, without the necessary objective data to underpin them. That shows, yet again, poor governance of our country. In Senate estimates, I discussed with the chief medical officer and the secretary of the health department the seven essential components of a plan for managing a virus. The federal government is addressing one; the state governments are addressing another—that’s it—and they have both been addressed poorly.

I want to discuss the productive capacity because that’s what determines the wealth and the economic security, and, indeed, sometimes the defence security of our nation in the future. The productive capacity of our country has been declining considerably since 1944 and, in fact, since 1923, if we want to get into basics—but that’s for another day. Let’s look at the most important part of productive capacity—the human asset, our people. Look at education, because it’s the future leaders of this country who will determine the future productive capacity, as well as us determining that capacity today. We have declining scores in education. Reading and writing, mathematics and science—declining. By world standards, we are falling well behind in the core aspects of education but we devote plenty of resources, plenty of time, plenty of energy to teaching kids—misleading kids—about gender fluidity, critical race theory, non-gender language and a national curriculum that the government forks out money for yet cannot control. That’s what has been told to us by the federal government.

We need charter schools. We need parents to have more say in the running of their schools, and principals to have more say in the running of their schools; parents to control what values are passed on; and parents to decide whether or not their children will be taught about gender fluidity. I want to compliment Mark Latham in the New South Wales parliament and my colleague Senator Pauline Hanson for the bills they are introducing and evaluating right now to restore values and common sense to education. I note that Singapore, Japan, and Korea have really moved ahead in recent years, as has Taiwan. They all have solid basic education.

What’s happened to apprenticeships in this country? Senator Lines moved a motion today with regard to apprenticeships sadly lacking in WA. Senator Hanson has proudly introduced an apprenticeship scheme that the government has taken and refurbished and expanded, such is the success of her suggestion on apprenticeships. What has happened to universities? They followed our primary schools and high schools in becoming more woke and driven by anything but education. As for university education, it is now just pushing an ideology. Our TAFE systems have fallen into disrepair; our trades qualifications are falling into disrepair.

Let’s move on then to the workplace. The Fair Work Act is an abomination. It is about that thick in pages printed. It destroys the employer-employee relationship, which is essential for productive capacity. It is difficult for anyone, an employee or a small businesses employer who doesn’t have access to lawyers and consultants and HR practitioners to work their way through that. How can they possibly be held accountable for that relationship when they can’t even understand it and never will understand it, not because of lack of intelligence but because of lack of time and surely being overwhelmed? Again, just like education, this is poor governance to get into this state.

Then we go to energy—arguably the most critical in material resources because energy has determined the competitiveness of every country. Under President Trump America reversed the decline in its competitiveness because it reversed its increase of energy prices and it started to decrease its energy prices again. America became more competitive against its competitors and blossomed because of that. President Trump created more jobs than any president in history because of that and because he cut away regulations.

This government and its predecessors have fiddled the Renewable Energy Target, destroying our baseload coal-fired power stations, our grid. The network costs are destroying our grid, making it unaffordable. Retail sectors of electricity are just a fabrication. The national electricity market is now a national electricity racket. It’s not a market at all; it’s a bureaucracy that’s interfered with and manipulated by bureaucrats looking after vested interests. Then we see privatisation. The Queensland Labor government is taking about $1½ billion every year from people who use electricity—businesses, small businesses and families—and that is now a tax. We have taxes on electricity. Why is it that the Chinese can produce electricity and sell it for one-third the cost of electricity sold in this country when they use the same coal as we do? They take it thousands of kilometres, burn it and sell the coal-fired power to their consumers and we sell it for three times as much because of regulations that come out of both sides of this parliament.

Then we look at water. The Murray-Darling Basin has been gutted. Communities have been gutted. Regions have been gutted. And nothing is happening about it. Today we passed an amendment to restore compliance with the law, the Water Act of 2007, with regard to water trading. It was supported by the Labor Party but denied by the Liberals and Nationals. They don’t want to comply with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It went down to the lower house and Labor changed and sent it back here, in cahoots with the Liberals and Nationals. That will continue to destroy water allocations in our country because it will continue the corruption and the likely—I’m very confident in saying this—criminal activity going in the Murray-Darling Basin with regard to abuse of water trading.

Then we see property rights, which are fundamental to running a farm or a business. They were capriciously stolen under the Howard-Anderson government in 1996 and then progressively by Labor premiers from Queensland and New South Wales, jumping on the bandwagon to steal farmers’ property rights. Why? To comply with the United Nations Kyoto protocol of 1996—that’s why. Farmers have lost the value of their land. We see that extended in Queensland, for example, by the Queensland state government, relying on bogus claims about the reef to lock up land. We then see the federal government enacting carbon farming, where vast tracks of good farmland are laid waste, abandoned and taken over by feral animals and noxious weeds. There are costs to managing them as they spread around the country and fall on their neighbours’ properties. This is another example of poor governance. There’s a lack of infrastructure in water. The Bradfield scheme is crying out for investment.

Then we go to the most destructive system of all in our country, the Australian taxation system. In 1996 and 2010, Jim Killaly was the deputy commissioner of taxation for large companies and international matters. He said on both occasions—1996 and 2010—that 90 per cent of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and, since 1953, have paid little or no company tax. They use our resources, people, assets, defence forces, police forces and education system and pay nothing in return and just take. The Japanese, by comparison, have in their large companies 2.5 per cent foreign owned. The American and the British figures are about 12.5 per cent. Who pays for these foreign companies to use our assets and to make money without paying company tax? The people of Australia pay for that through families paying taxes, individuals paying taxes, small businesses paying taxes and some large Australian come companies paying 30 per cent against their multinational competitors who don’t have to pay that. How can we possibly compete? Then we found out in the late 1990s and early 2000s—and I’ve asked the Parliamentary Library to update this figure—that a person on an average income in this country pays 68 per cent of their income to government. Housing is not our largest expenditure in life; government is, through taxes, rates, fees, levies, chargers, supercharges and special charges. Joe Hockey admitted when he was Treasurer that 50 per cent of a person’s income is taken in tax. He said people work from January through to the end of June for government and then they keep what’s left. The actual figure, when you take in government charges, rates, levies and fees as well, is 68 per cent, which means that someone on the average income is working from Monday to mid-morning Thursday to pay for government.

Then they have what’s left, the two-thirds of Thursday and Friday, to pay for their entire life: their retirement, their education, their food, their shelter, their car, their transport, their entertainment. That is not fair, and it shows poor governance. I haven’t got time now to talk about attempts to reform taxation, but both parties, both the tired old parties, have shown a reluctance to invest energy and political will and sheer guts in tackling—and they lack the integrity to tackle—comprehensive tax reform.

I mentioned infrastructure a minute ago. What about projects like the Richmond agricultural project? What about the irrigation project up in Hughenden? What about things like Iron Boomerang, which would transform our country and make it the most cost-effective and largest producer of steel, and give us enormous security for manufacturing and for our defence? Then we have things that tap into that Iron Boomerang—things like an inland rail that’s being destroyed by the Liberal-National government, an inland rail that is sucking up resources and coming up with something that will be far worse than the existing installations, especially when we consider the blowout in the cost. Again, it’s a lack of data, a lack of sound planning. An inland rail and a proper route through to Gladstone would be part, then, of a proper national rail circuit.

Madam Deputy President, I submit to you these points that show and prove that the government here has not only left the poor behind, as Senator Siewert points out; the government has put additional burdens on the poor, the government has put a regressive tax on the poor in terms of energy prices. Energy prices are increasing alarmingly, and the poor have to pay a higher and higher and higher proportion of their income on a fundamental, which is energy. And then the poor pay for it because they lose their jobs when our manufacturing jobs and some of our agricultural and agricultural processing jobs are exported to China, which uses our raw materials—gas and coal—to produce electricity far more cheaply than we sell it for in our own country. So we’re losing out entirely and we lose out in the diminishing of our defence security.

So I certainly agree with Senator Siewert that the Morrison government’s 2021-22 budget has left people on low incomes behind. It has left people right across the country behind. It has left Australia behind.

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LABOR BACKFLIPS ON WATER TRADING REGISTER IN DODGY DEAL

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Labor has sensationally backflipped on a One Nation water register in the House of Representatives after supporting it in the Senate. The Water Act was passed in 2007 with the provision that trades be recorded in a central, basin-wide, transparent water trading register.

The Council of Water Ministers agreed to this register in 2008. The Murray Darling Basin Authority tried to introduce this register in 2009 and failed. Nothing has been done since, my amendment simply put a date on getting it done of September 2021.

The amendment was passed in the Senate with the entire cross bench and ALP in support. Then the ALP and the Government did a dodgy deal to vote the amendment down in the lower house.

The Nationals and the ALP are acting together to breach the Water Act in order to stop a transparent water register which will show who is trading water for speculative purposes. The only logical conclusion is that these parties are protecting their own.

Transcript 

The amendments on sheet 1200 simply implement an existing requirement of the Water Act to maintain a transparent register of water trades. This provision has been in the Water Act for 14 years. As Minister Dutton kindly pointed out in the House of Representatives debate this morning, this amendment has a solid legal basis. The pathetic excuse the Nationals gave that the states each have their own register actually supports our case for a basin-wide register. The Nationals have confirmed that there is not a basin-wide register. By taking this action, the ALP and the Liberals and their sellout sidekicks the Nationals are making it clear that they intend to pick and choose which aspects of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan they intend to follow. It’s a bit like they’re saying: ‘We like this bit. Let’s spend years stealing water from farmers, forcing up the price of water so the holdings of our friends are suddenly worth a fortune. But we hate this bit. We don’t want anyone to know what we’re doing.’ On what legal basis are the Nationals, the Liberals and Labor doing this? (Time expired)

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