Page 5181 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 27 October 2010
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originally started out with in the negotiations many years ago. Even when we did all of those things, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, through this publication, has dudded us. The minister has pointed to a number of instances in the documentation which are wrong, which are contrary to previous documentation of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority or which completely disregard the operation and the needs of the ACT.
In this discussion Mr Rattenbury spoke about the constitutional requirements in relation to water. One of the things that has not been mentioned in any of the discussion is the fact that there is commonwealth, New South Wales and ACT legislation that gives the people of the ACT paramount rights—I repeat that: paramount rights—to the waters of the upper reaches of the Murrumbidgee River and the waters of the Molonglo River.
This has not been taken into account in this equation. The fact that most of the water that comes into the ACT or falls on ACT land leaves the ACT to be used downstream and perhaps to be over-allocated downstream, is not taken into account. The minister in his comments today has made it quite clear that he has concerns about this.
My concern about the minister is that he is not being robust enough in his defence of the ACT. Mr Corbell basically says that he has a problem with the language. He does not want to vigorously defend. He thinks that we should defend our current allocation but he does not want to use the words “vigorously defend” and he seems unwilling to engage the people of the ACT in this important matter.
I made the point the other day in discussing this that this is not a matter for people down river. It is not a matter for irrigators. It is not a matter for horticulturalists. It is not a matter for the people of Adelaide. It is a matter for everybody who lives in the basin and it is a matter for the people of the ACT. Because we do not have the top-of-mind issues like large-scale irrigation and things like that, I think the people of the ACT are not yet engaged with this very important issue.
I think it is incumbent upon us here in the ACT to ensure that our citizens are engaged and understand what is going on. At this stage they should understand that they are being dudded but that the current publication stands in stark contrast to other information that is provided by the same organisation. Search the webpage and you will find contradictory information depending on which publication you look at.
These are serious matters and I am not yet satisfied that the minister is concerned enough about this. I note that he has said that he has made submissions. I would ask the minister to provide as a matter of course to the Assembly the copies of submissions that he has made both to the minister and to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
The substantial amendment is Mr Corbell’s amendment No 7, which basically takes out all the courses of action that we have proposed and condenses that into saying that we will make submissions on behalf of the territory. I think that this is where we fall down.
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