Fran Bailey (McEwen, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very keen to follow the previous speaker in the MPI debate. It has been stated here in various ways that the Rudd government has a detailed water management plan. Let me put to the House that this is nothing more than a plan of political expediency. There is no greater example of that than the north-south pipeline that previous speakers have derided. Let me give the genesis of the approval process that the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has so recently signed off on. Before the last state election, the then Bracks state government promised that there would be a water-recycling plant in Melbourne and that they would never divert water from north of the divide to Melbourne. Within a couple of months following that state election, the state government did a 180-degree turn, cancelled the water-recycling plant and announced that they would divert a minimum of 75 billion litres of water from north of the divide, from an area which has been so stressed and has been suffering severe drought for many years, from a catchment area that, when they made that announcement, was at only 14 per cent of its capacity—CSIRO having said that you need at least nine per cent in Eildon to deal with a blue-green algae outbreak at any time.

The state government has built its case on supposed water savings. Let me tell this House that the state government has only budgeted, and only plans, to fix five per cent of 7,000 kilometres of water channelling. And that so-called fix of the five per cent is only lining the channels, not even covering them. This is why no water scientist and no public official has been prepared to publicly verify the so-called water savings as stated by the state government. This is an absolute disgrace. The federal minister has given his approval to a project which, firstly, has had no environmental impact assessment and, secondly, for which nobody, but nobody, will verify the so-called water savings.

Let us look at what the state government are saying about these non-verifiable water savings. On the one hand they say that these are going to go to the Living Murray. On the other hand they say that only water that comes from savings will come down the pipeline. They cannot have it both ways. It cannot be going into the Living Murray while at the same time coming down the pipeline. We know they can never save more than 30 billion litres of water when they have stated that they are going to send down at least 75 billion and probably 110 billion litres of water.

The minister’s press release makes the position perfectly clear. We know why he has approved it. He actually says:

Securing water supply for our urban populations is of fundamental importance.

That is what this is about. This is about the federal minister for the environment propping up his state mates because they have got themselves into bother—no environmental impact assessment and absolutely no science whatsoever. Not only has he done that; he has further given them wriggle room because the state government has to specifically allocate the amount of water savings that it is sending into the Living Murray. Unless the state government specifically allocates and says how much that allocation will be—which they have not done—that water does not go into the Living Murray. So for the minister to stand in here and acclaim the government’s water management plan for the Murray-Darling Basin is an absolute travesty. The Goulburn River is one of the hardest-working rivers of that system, and the Victorian Premier decided to remove the Goulburn from the Murray-Darling system simply by putting out a press release and making that announcement. It is a travesty. (Time expired)