BUSINESS

Mr BURKE (Watson—Minister for the Arts, Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Cyber Security, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship and Leader of the House) (09:50): Those who have spoken in the debate are people who know the basin well, and so some of what I go through now is for the benefit of members generally. I don't want this to be seen by those who have had much of their livelihood or some or all of their livelihood within the basin as me explaining it to them, but I think there are some facts about water that, for the benefit of the House and the operation of the plan, are helpful for me to lay out.

I do this in that context. In the first instance—and I'm always troubled by the acronym CHEW because the letters aren't in that order, but anyway. It's the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder which was established under the Water Act.

The office is actually a creation of the Howard government. The concept when the Water Act was brought in and the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder was established, in the face of an acknowledgement from the Howard government and supported by our side in opposition, was that the river system had been overallocated to death. The concerns that were put by the member for Barker, in terms of people living within the basin wanting the system to be healthy, are something that has been acknowledge and acknowledged really strongly.

There is a regular characteristic within the basin that people will generally acknowledge overallocation for the water entitlements that are given to their north, effectively. In areas like the Riverland—I spent time in the Riverland when I was putting the basin plan together—there was a view back then, which I presume is still the view but I haven't ground-truthed it recently, that people were concerned that there was overallocation in catchments further north and higher up in the system.

That certainly was the view back then. I remember the view by the member for Groom back at the time before he went off to his current minerals job— An honourable member interjecting— Mr BURKE: Yes, yes, yes. He used to say, 'The water falls on my land first, so I get it.' That was his perspective.

But, state by state, the river system runs across the country, and what we had was, when it was viewed state by state, that the allocations were being done in a way that did not allow for the health of the system. The perspective that was put forward by the Water Act was to be able to say, 'We need one of the irrigators within the system to effectively be someone who's job is to irrigate for the environment.' That's what the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder is—an acknowledgement that the system will never go back to being a fully natural system.

The Murray itself has locks and dams the whole way through. The system will never flow as a completely natural system, but to be able to ensure its health we need one of the irrigators to be someone who is charged to be irrigating for the purposes of the environment, and that's what the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder is there to establish. In terms of different forms of compliance and different forms of oversight that are there, there's significant parliamentary oversight which already occurs with respect to the Murray Darling Basin Authority.

The Inspector General of Water Compliance is a really important role. It's a role which, for some of what is being here, I think is well-positioned to do a whole lot of the work that has been suggested in speeches so far. The Inspector General of Water Compliance is a position that I think those opposite should have some confidence in.

It was originally proposed by the member for Maranoa when he was the minister for water. It was then implemented by Keith Pitt, first with the interim position in 2019 and then with the official position in 2020. The position itself is held by someone who I would have thought would have the confidence of those opposite.

It's Troy Grant, who was a former National Party deputy premier for New South Wales. There are different forms of compliance there. I think, in fairness, there is a view from some of those opposite that, notwithstanding that there was support for the plan at the time that I put it in, the bipartisan support for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan simply isn't there anymore.

I think that's a reality. Mr Littleproud: You changed the plan. Mr BURKE: I acknowledge the interjection that's coming from the former leader of the National Party.

Let me just say that part of the plan—and a fairly critical part of the plan—was that the water to be recovered would be recovered. It was pretty fundamental that the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder would be a holder of water. In terms of the delivery of the plan, there are two sections on being able to acquire additional water.

For the bit that's referred to as the bridging-the-gap target, we're now at 99 per cent. With respect to the additional 450-gigalitre target, when we came to office, of those 450 gigalitres, 24 gigalitres had been obtained. We've got that now to 225 gigalitres that have been obtained.

In fairness to those opposite, I put the former deputy prime minister who's in the chamber now in a different situation to others, because he did in fact vote against that 450 being included. He voted with the Greens to do so. He did cross the floor and took a position.

He is consistent now with the position he took then, which is not consistent with the position he had in the middle. But at least on where he started and where he's ended up he is consistent. The reality is that the work that is done by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, which will always be complex but is effectively the pathway of making sure that that water is used for the environment, is essential for the health of the basin.

Yes, jobs are essential and communities are essential. There are no jobs and there are no communities on a dead river. We need to make sure that the health of the system is retained.

People understand the role of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. Anyone in those regions knows very well that any environmental watering event, the same as any flooding event, operates differently each time. It always operates differently each time.

That's the nature of large volumes of water. Even though they are a very substantial holder of water within the basin in terms of irrigation licences, it is also the case that the work that needs to be done changes every year. The work that needs to be done will be different.

You can conduct the same operation, whether it's to break up water with pulsating releases during a blackwater event or whether it's an overbank flow, and all of those events will operate differently on each occasion. The challenge, though, is to always ask: in the alternative, where would we be? In the alternative, we saw exactly what was happening.

When the river system hits those critical moments, when the river system cracks, when the river system dries out because of overallocation without the proper use of environmental water, it's not just the environment that loses; it's the communities and the irrigators that lose. You end up with a system that cannot function. If we were not in a circumstance where overallocation had occurred then we would not require the reform at all.

But the reality is we had a river system which had been overallocated to death, and we had nine years where, effectively, acquiring additional water was brought to a halt. We now have a circumstance where additional oversight mechanisms were brought in during the course of the previous government. We supported those being introduced, we support them continuing and we also have support for the person who is in that role, who, as I say, is a former deputy premier of New South Wales, who held that role as a member of the National Party.

Murray-Darling reform will always be hard. It will always require maximum layers of consultation with the community. It will always involve making sure that you have adaptive management.

That is part of how this is dealt with. But, essentially, those who now look back and want to imagine that the reform did not happen would be taking us backwards in a really substantial way.