Restoring Rivers Bill Second Reading
I also rise to speak on the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. I agree with some of Senator Canavan's remarks about our ability to do more to enable our environment to recover and thrive with the rivers flowing, but this bill doesn't quite do that. I've had a very good interaction with the office of the Minister for the Environment and Water, Ms Plibersek, to try and find ways to improve this bill. There are many ways in which this bill could be improved, and I think we've been able to achieve some of them. Hopefully, we can get further on that, but given the time frame that this bill has in which to pass and its limitations, there is only so much that can be done in this round, but it doesn't mean that the bill can't be improved further.
The ability that I now have as an Independent senator to focus on improving legislation and to look at policy and improve it, rather than simply focus on the politics, is an incredibly liberating path to take and one I am enjoying thoroughly. I'm also enjoying the intellectual rigour that I get to bring to policy. Rather than being hamstrung by the politics of it—by the partyroom agenda and by those words only given to you by leadership—I can now take legislation and policy and debate and improve it as well as I can for the people of Victoria and, indeed, for all Australians. Hopefully, that is what I have been able to do with this bill.
As we know, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was implemented in 2008 and then renegotiated in 2011, so this is old policy. It is old legislation. While the government has done what it can to improve it somewhat, it's basically the same old policy. When I sat down to take a look at this legislation, my priority was to ask how it could be improved, and improved not just for farmers, although they are incredibly important—they've been great to me on how they've engaged with me about what this will do—but for the communities who will be affected by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. There is lots in this bill that can be improved and in many different ways that will modernise what is basically a constrained network, like our gas market and our electricity market. This is just a market with constraints. Buybacks themselves are only one financial instrument that is being used here.
Where I think I've been able to get this bill and have been working to get this bill is to look at a range of different financial instruments that allow the Commonwealth to get the water it needs for the environmental needs of the rivers. Those needs are large. The Darling is choking and the Murray is drowning. These can't just be let to lie, and this can't be allowed to happen just based off one bit of legislation. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to be able to fix both these river systems. And fix them we must.
As I said before I was put into continuation, we have a situation where the Darling/Barka is absolutely choking to death, with not enough water flowing through it, whereas at the same time the Murray-Darling is drowning because there is too much water being put through it. If you go and have a look at the Barmah Forest right now, it is two or three feet underwater. This is a red-gum forest—it needs to be flooded from time to time—but to be kept under water simply to force water down the Murray River is killing that forest. It has already killed all the undergrowth, which means that there are no echidnas there, no goannas and likely no koalas in those trees. The environmental impacts that this amendment to the bill is trying to achieve aren't necessarily going to be achieved simply through buybacks. While we have a river system that is diverse in geography, it is also terribly diverse temporally—that is, part might be in flood one time and in drought another. As Dorothea Mackellar said in 1904, I believe, we are a land of droughts and flooding planes, no more so than in the Murray-Darling basin
That is why simply sticking to a monolithic, dull, blunt instrument to try and supply water down through the Murray-Darling system isn't smart policy. Yes, it buys water, but that doesn't necessarily means it gets to the place you need it to get to or is used for the reason it needs to be used, which could be flood plain regeneration or stopping bank erosion. If you go up and look at parts of the Murray and the amount of water flowing through, the amount of bank erosion is quite frightening. That means it is likely that the platypus that were there that had their nests in those banks have had to seek shelter elsewhere, if they've managed to survive.
What is the alternative to a blunt instrument? I'm glad you asked. We need to look at alternatives to do this. This is simply a constrained market, and we need to look at in those terms, exactly the same as the gas market, the national electricity market and commodity markets. Markets manage to use different instruments to solve different problems. This is where I would like to thank Minister Plibersek for having the intelligence, temerity and bravery to sit down with me and find different ways to solve what are not one single problem. They are diverse problems that need diverse solutions to be achieved. I won't go into the engineering parts that have been put forward because they have been debated in this place and in rural newspapers almost every day.
Where we've got to with this legislation is the ability not simply to rely on buybacks but for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to be able to use other instruments. What instruments, you ask? Instruments such as leasing water. A large part of the damage of buybacks is the fact that the water is bought in perpetuity. The people at home might not know that when a farmer sells his entitlement to the water back to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority it's not for one year or for two years—it's in perpetuity. What effect does that have on a farm? I know there are a few farmers in the chamber right now who will tell you—if you take water away from a farm, it's no longer a farm. Yes, the farmer might be able to take the money he gets from the buyback and turn it into some other economic activity. I know of one example where the farmer wants to build an abattoir. That does make some sense, especially if he's given a grant to go along with that to be able to proceed and to promote the economic development of that particular area. But there can't be an abattoir on every block. And if you look at some of these constraint areas, once one farmer takes a buyback then the rest of the region is going to suffer and pay even more for their water simply because of the constraints that it's going to put on the system.
A farmer, after all is usually a small-businessman. There are some large ones too, we know that. But the small-businessmen that I care about need to have the flexibility to be able to manage their farm in the way that they see best. They may see leasing their water for 12 months as a smart thing to do, and they can do that currently through the water market. But what about if they want to look longer term? A farmer being able to set the lease term for leasing back water gives them and the CEWH—or the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder—flexibility to be able to do the things both of them need to be able to do—that is, run a business and provide water to the environment. That term for leasing back the water could be 12 months, three years, 10 years or 30 years. But it's through a negotiation—based on pricing, what premium they will get and when the water is needed—that you get real flexibility in the system and a system that is able to cope with the droughts and floodplains that we mentioned before.
We saw in 2022—and even in this year—more water go down the Murray—and the darling, for part of it—than it can cope with. That says to me that you need flexibility in the system because if, in a flood year, you push more water down the system, you are just going to flood more towns, homes and businesses. I don't see the point in that. In my view would be we should be having something like a rolling five or 10 year average, based off scientific principles that says: 'There's sufficient groundwater and sufficient surface water. We know what the flows are at various points along the rivers. We now know that we need to contract for more water or less.' Rather than pushing water through constraints like the Barmah Choke, which just kill forests and biodiversity, you get not only the opportunity for farmers to do more farming, which means more food and fibre for us all to eat and wear, but also the environmental needs that you are looking for.
The hardest part about this is if you just stick with buybacks, it is going to damage the economies in these communities—of that I have no doubt. I've been up and down the Hume Highway and up and down along the river visiting all the communities, and I've spoken to enough people, communities and farmers, to know that they are all absolutely petrified that the damage done from previous buyback periods is going to be visited on them again. However, they were thrilled to know that, if there is a leasing arrangement, they'll have the flexibility to do what they need to do. They know, with that, the social and economic impact on their communities is going to be lessened.
But here's the thing: the government wanted to take the socioeconomic impact test out of the legislation. I'm happy to tell the chamber that I will be moving an amendment to keep that socioeconomic test in there. I also foreshadowed that I will be moving a second reading amendment that says that leasing will be a feature of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan moving forward. Why am I doing these things? Because it protects the river. It protects biodiversity. It protects communities. It protects farmers. It is a far smarter way to run this system. It's a constrained system. It's a system that floods and has droughts. We're going into a potential drought year. It is a far smarter way to build flexibility into a system. It's just doing in this marketplace what happens in every other marketplace. You use tools at the right time, in the right place and for the right reasons. For that reason, I think leasing is going to be very, very good for the Murray-Darling Basin system.
