Mr CLAYTON BARR (Cessnock) (10:57): I make a contribution to debate on the Water Management Amendment (Transfer of Water) Bill 2023, introduced in this place by the member for Murray. I say at the outset that I have watched the member for Murray being incredibly passionate, thoughtful, provocative, constructive and engaging in all that she has contributed to this place on the topic of water. I have been fortunate enough to spend a number of hours with the member for Murray, learning from her all that I could about the topic of water and the role that it plays in her community. More importantly, its role in business and communities across New South Wales in agriculture and our exports, but also making sure that our supermarkets have fruit and vegetables on the benches, that there is milk in the fridge and rice on our shelves, and for those people who, after they have filled their shopping trolleys with all the essentials, might buy a few nuts to throw in there for a bit of Christmas cheer.
The member for Murray has probably forgotten more about water than I will ever know. There can be no doubt that she knows water. I place on record a little bit of history, which all members should be cognisant of, so that we can consider the bill properly and contemplate where we are today. Sixteen years ago we established the Water Act and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. That required a significant amount of work as we progressed to get a better balance between water being extracted from the river systems, and water being protected and kept in our river systems for the sake of the environment.
The unfortunate reality for the people of New South Wales and Australia, and the environment, is that between 2011 and 2023 in New South Wales, and between 2013 and 2022 at the Commonwealth level, Liberal-Nationals governments, particularly The Nationals, were determined to make sure that there was not only no progress on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan but that things went backwards. To the enormous credit of the National Party at the State and Federal level, in trying to completely wreck the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, they succeeded. Good on them, they stuffed it for everyone. Now federally we have a new government.
I continue my contribution to debate on the Water Management Amendment (Transfer of Water) Bill 2023, introduced by the member for Murray. I previously acknowledged the member’s extensive knowledge of water. The intention of the bill is to make it necessary for a government, State or Federal, if it was to take possession or ownership of water, to undertake a public interest test or an assessment of the socio-economic impacts on the community that potentially may lose the water, and for the government give an assurance through that process that the community would not be any worse off.
I talk specifically about a figure of 450 gigalitres of water, which the Federal Government committed, under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, to be returned to the environment on top of the original agreed 2,750 gigalitres of water. Just before question time I said that unfortunately at a State and Federal level between 2013 and 2022, there were Liberal-Nationals governments, and the National Party was responsible for water. The modus operandi, the intent, the purpose and the outcome of their actions at that time was to dramatically interfere with the entire Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
That is not to make excuses for what the current government in New South Wales and federally needs to do going forward, but it is to say that we should not be in the predicament we are in today. We should be much further progressed towards restoring all the necessary water under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and getting the balance right for the communities that rely on water for their economic activity of putting food on our tables and in the supermarkets. Those communities have often developed entirely around their agricultural businesses. Temporary Speaker Layzell and I could compare those communities with the communities in our part of the world in the Hunter Valley that revolve around coal. If coal were shut down that would have a significant impact. Eventually, over time, that will head in that direction.
The bill introduced by the member for Murray is eminently and absolutely sensible. But the Government in New South Wales and federally is between a rock and a hard place because we have long-term commitments that we need to get to. Not enough work has been done over the past 10 years, we are getting to the pointy end of it all and, unfortunately, the Federal Government has put water buybacks on the table. The position of the New South Wales Government is that we absolutely do not want to see water buybacks, but we understand that they are on the table. We would much rather take on projects and get investment to try to realise the water that needs to be returned to the environment without the buybacks, but we understand that they are on the table. As important as water is for those communities, we also have to acknowledge that a lot of other factors and levers have had a demonstrable effect on their success, condition and socio-economics.
I have previously mentioned in Parliament how agriculture has changed over the years, not necessarily by water being less or more available, but by other elements. It is a simple fact that we have genetically modified crops that take less work and fewer workers to bring to harvest. We have some dairy farms that have significantly reduced their workforce by way of automation, robot machinery that does much of the work that was once done by people. I visited a cotton farm in Bourke that historically had a school and an entire community on the property, because so many workers were required to bring the cotton to harvest. Now the school has gone and the entire community on the property has gone. Work like cotton chipping, which was often done by itinerant workers particularly in the local community, has been bred out of the cotton seed that is used. All of those jobs have disappeared.
The tractors that now run up and down the paddocks are twice, three times, four times or five times wider than they ever were. There are tractors now that are fundamentally becoming driverless. Those jobs have disappeared as well. A lot of elements about the difficulties, challenges and, in some instances, decline of our regional communities are completely unrelated to water. Water absolutely is an essential element to agriculture, I am not saying it is not, and taking it away absolutely will have impacts, but I also say that we are not putting a lot of other factors into legislation, so should we do it specifically with water?
I was going to wind up my remarks but I notice the Parliamentary Secretary and member for Campbelltown at the table was deeply engaged in the contribution I was making, so I will expand a little bit more. I am trying to make the point that our agricultural communities are affected by many things other than water. Water sometimes does not stay in the valleys, catchments and zones for which it was originally licensed, the member for Murray knows this and probably explained this to me. Sometimes those transfers take the water out to other parts of the State. That has undoubtedly had an impact on the success or decline of some agricultural business. I also know that since water became a product that goes on the mark, essentially the person with the most money or willingness to pay the highest price buys the water.
That has also had a terrible impact on some agricultural businesses, in particular dairy farms. I visited a number of dairy farms along the Murray. They said that when there is not as much water around as they would like, when there is no natural rainfall to make sure that the grass is green in the paddocks, they simply cannot compete with some of the other water users, such as those growing rice or nuts further down the river. Our dairy, which is one of the first products I put in my shopping trolley when I go to the supermarket, is under threat, not because water has been bought back by the Federal Government in this instance, but because other products are now in the ground and growers are willing to pay a higher price for water.
In the case of nuts, as a classic example, they have essentially bought rubbish desert land in the south-west corner of the State and then purchased water. Now because they have a licence to have the water provided to them, we have the problem of running water incredibly hard down the Murray to get it to those people who built a farm in a desert. All that water has been taken out of a variety of communities to get there, but we are not legislating to stop that from happening and that has had a terrible impact on communities right along that river system.
The water is running so hard in some parts of the Murray system that it is affecting non-agricultural industries like tourism and businesses along the river system. That is affecting the quality of the water in the system, making it muddy and allowing space for more carp to grow. It is folding trees into the river system because we are delivering water to a place that is way down the end of the system. They are all terrible impacts, but those are not effects of buybacks but rather of the way that New South Wales and Australia is managing water within the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
The Government will not support the bill. I emphasise that that is not to say I do not think that taking water out of a community has an impact, but many other things also have an impact. We are not legislating for them. We have to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We are committed to delivering the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We have a commitment from the National Party in New South Wales that they also want to see the Murray-Darling Basin Plan delivered in full. I think collectively across the Chamber we hope to see no more water buybacks, but we are in a position where the Federal Government has said that is part of the conversation. We would absolutely rather see projects deliver the water back to the environmental desires of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, but we are not quite there yet. The State Government will continue to work with the Commonwealth Government to negotiate, stay in the game, stay at the table and try to do everything we can to make sure water buybacks are not necessary, but we simply cannot support the bill from the good member for Murray.