Page 173 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2019
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Murray-Darling Basin plan and, yes, we are geographically situated within the Murrumbidgee catchment, which is a tributary of the Murray-Darling.
To put the recent critical royal commission report about water flows into perspective, the report was commissioned by and for the South Australian government. South Australia is the last man on the river totem pole. Historically, it has always been at the mercy of states and communities upstream, and upstream extends all the way to Queensland. Water is shared between New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia under the provisions of the Murray-Darling Basin agreement. Over the years a combination of natural droughts and increased human use of the waterways for agriculture, manufacturing and towns along the river system has led to a decline in the health of the basin system.
The plan was established in 2012, when it was recognised that a formal agreement was needed to manage demands on the water and improve the health of the river system. The aim was to bring the Murray-Darling Basin back to environmental health. The ACT is a signatory to the plan, along with the Australian government and the Queensland, New South Wales, Victorian and South Australian governments. However, the reality is that economic pressures and expansion of agricultural activities, as well as increases in regional populations, have all played a part in bringing great system stress onto it. The current drought has, of course, exacerbated the problem.
Commissioner Bret Walker SC has targeted commonwealth government officials for what he has called gross maladministration, negligence and unlawful actions in drawing up the deal to save the river system. And perhaps there needs to be a reminder for this chamber that it was the former federal Labor government, under then Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who established the plan and approved its structure. It was never likely to be an easy task and it has proven to be so.
Getting states to agree to a fair allocation, to setting aside water for environmental flows at a time of drought, meaning irrigated crops and those businesses and families that depended on them would be denied their ability to produce an income, is not easy. Of course, sensational TV programs added to the already difficult and challenging debate.
Ms Cheyne’s motion acknowledges the work of the ACT government and its healthy waterway projects that focus on water quality. However, they are not in the same category as the $24 billion agriculture industry that depends on the Murray-Darling or the 9,200 irrigated businesses that have been developed.
On that basis, I think it is somewhat of an overstep for the ACT government to be preaching to either the federal government or state governments about what they ought to be doing. As a signatory to the plan, the ACT has an opportunity to put forward suggestions and work collaboratively, but we need to be mindful that it is not our constituents that we are condemning to failed business if we get the balance wrong. Equally, we have to accept that droughts are a consistent and frequent occurrence in the Australian weather pattern and if water is not put into the system through rainfall in the basin or upstream we have to control what is taken out.
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