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representatives vote 2023-10-18#6
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2024-01-28 20:58:33
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Title
Bills — Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023; Consideration in Detail- Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 - Consideration in Detail - Government amendments
Description
<p class="speaker">Zoe Daniel</p><p>by leave—I move amendments (1), (3) and (4), as circulated in my name, together:</p>-
- The majority voted in favour of [government amendments](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2023-10-18.47.1) introduced by Sydney MP [Tanya Plibersek](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/representatives/sydney/tanya_plibersek) (Labor), which means they will now be included in the bill.
- ### What do these amendments do?
- Ms Plibersek [explained that](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2023-10-18.47.1):
- > *The government is introducing amendments to the bill to: firstly, strengthen transparency and accountability in the Basin Plan, including for the role of the Inspector-General of Water Compliance; secondly, ensure the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission can enforce its new information-gathering powers by making the ACCC the appropriate enforcement agency and adding a civil penalty provision for contraventions; thirdly, ensure the Inspector-General for Water Compliance does not have oversight of the ACCC or the Commonwealth or basin agencies that the ACCC regulates in relation to the integrity and conduct obligations in the bill; and, fourthly, to make minor and technical amendments in response to feedback from Commonwealth and basin state agencies and to ensure the bill would operate as intended.*
<p class="italic">(1) Clause 2, page 3 (at the end of the table), add:</p><p class="italic">(3) Schedule 2, page 11 (after line 7), after item 1, insert:</p><p class="italic">1A Subsection 6.08(5)</p><p class="italic">Omit "following the commencement of a water resource plan".</p><p class="italic">1B Subsection 6.08(6)</p><p class="italic">Repeal the subsection.</p><p class="italic">(4) Page 99 (after line 18), at the end of the Bill, add:</p><p class="italic">Schedule 7 — Responding to climate change</p><p class="italic"> <i>Water Act 2007</i></p><p class="italic">1 Before paragraph 3(a)</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic">(aa) to recognise and acknowledge:</p><p class="italic">(i) the threat of the impacts of climate change to the communities, environment and industries of the Murray-Darling Basin; and</p><p class="italic">(ii) the need for immediate and urgent action in response; and</p><p class="italic">2 Subsection 4(1)</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic"><i>National Standard</i> means the standard determined under section 53A.</p><p class="italic">3 Before paragraph 20(a)</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic">(aa) immediate, urgent and adaptive responses to the impacts of climate change; and</p><p class="italic">4 Before subsection 21(1)</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic"> <i>Basin Plan to respond to the impacts of climate change</i></p><p class="italic">(1A) The Basin Plan (including any environmental watering plan or water quality and salinity management plan included in the Basin Plan) must be prepared so as to provide immediate, urgent and adaptive responses to the impacts of climate change.</p><p class="italic">5 Subsection 21(4)</p><p class="italic">After "Subject to subsections", insert "(1A),".</p><p class="italic">6 After subsection 53(1)</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic">(1A) There is to be a National Standard for Managing Water in a Changing Climate. Water resource plans must be consistent with this National Standard.</p><p class="italic">7 After Subdivision A of Division 2 of Part 2</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic">Subdivision AA — National Standard for Managing Water in a Changing Climate</p><p class="italic">53A National Standard for Managing Water in a Changing Climate</p><p class="italic">(1) The Minister must, by legislative instrument, determine a National Standard for Managing Water in a Changing Climate that sets out minimum standards for water planning and management rules and practices.</p><p class="italic">(2) The Minister must ensure that the minimum standards are an immediate, urgent and adaptive response to the impacts of climate change.</p><p class="italic">53B Basin State water planning and management rules and practices must meet the National Standard</p><p class="italic">Each Basin State must ensure that its water planning and management rules and practices comply with the National Standard.</p><p class="italic">8 Before subsection 55(1)</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic">(1A) A water resource plan for a water resource plan area must comply with the National Standard.</p><p class="italic">9 After paragraph 172(1)(a)</p><p class="italic">Insert:</p><p class="italic">(aa) to review Basin State water planning and management rules and practices to ensure objectives can be achieved under likely climate scenarios;</p><p>I apologise to the minister and the chamber, especially my crossbench colleagues—</p> <p class="speaker">Milton Dick</p><p>Order! Just pause. If members can leave the chamber—there is far too much noise for the member for Goldstein to be heard. She has the call.</p> <p class="speaker">Zoe Daniel</p><p>I apologise to the minister and the chamber, especially my crossbench colleagues, for the lateness of these amendments. I appreciate the diligence with which the minister's staff have consulted with me on this important legislation. While I understand the lateness of these amendments means they won't pass, I hope the government will consider integrating these elements as the bill progresses.</p><p>My first and fourth amendments would require climate change and its impacts on the Murray-Darling to be taken into account in the administration of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The fact is that the Darling is already suffering significant stress, and all of us should worry about the consequences for the Menindee Lakes and the Coorong, for example, should we suffer another drought, which seems highly likely. According to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, winter rainfall and stream flow in the southern basin have declined by nearly 40 per cent since the mid-1990s, and climate change is only making it more difficult. This is not a climate trigger, although I believe that should be a feature of much other legislation. This would, though, incorporate climate change into the objects of the act. Its absence is a significant oversight, and this would rectify a serious omission.</p><p>The third amendment goes to water resource plans, which are an integral part of implementing the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. All jurisdictions, other than New South Wales, have successfully completed their MDB Water Resource Plans and had them accredited. But, as the Wentworth Group points out, despite being more than four years late and having accumulated deficits over the past three years as a result of overextraction in the case of the Barwon-Darling and the Gwydir River systems, these cumulative deficits will be zeroed under provisions in the existing Basin Plan when the New South Wales Water Resource Plan is accredited by the Commonwealth. As all other jurisdictions have met their commitments under the plan to submit and have their Water Resource Plans accredited by the Commonwealth, New South Wales remains the only jurisdiction not to have done so. When they eventually do, they will not be penalised from exceeding the SDLs from 2019 to the accreditation date. The amendment is designed to remedy this oversight.</p> <p class="speaker">Helen Haines</p><p>I rise to support the member for Goldstein's amendments in relation to the impacts of climate change on the basin. They seek to amend the Water Act to recognise and acknowledge the threat of climate change to the communities, environment and industries of the Murray-Darling Basin, and the need for immediate and urgent action in response.</p><p>These amendments also require the Basin Plan to be prepared to provide immediate, urgent and adaptive responses to the impacts of climate change. The current Basin Plan doesn't integrate the impacts of climate change at all. In my consultations on this bill, I heard time and time again that this is a significant failure. We must confront the facts. Climate change already does, and will increasingly, cause declines in average water inflows into the basin and increases in flow variability. And we can't stick our heads in the sand on this; we've known this to be the case for years. In 2007, when the Water Act was passed, the CSIRO estimated that by 2020 average annual flows could decline by about 15 per cent due to climate change; recovery from bushfire; farm, dam and plantation expansion; and increasing use of groundwater. I've seen this up-front in my electorate.</p><p>The CSIRO's estimates, in fact, came true. And it wasn't the Greens or the scientists themselves that brought them to the public's attention in 2007. I'd like to remind the House that it was John Howard, in his address to the National Press Club in 2007, where he stated:</p><p class="italic">… with the prospect of long-term climate change, we need radical and permanent change.</p><p>And:</p><p class="italic">That means looking at the evidence as it emerges …</p><p>So radical and permanent change led to the Water Act and the Basin Plan, and it was John Howard who said those words.</p><p>We need a Murray-Darling Basin Plan that puts us on the front foot, with a healthy river system that delivers for basin towns, communities, farmers and the environment, and which is resilient in the face of a changing climate. While I understand that the member for Goldstein's amendments won't be passed today, their aim is to address that. Ultimately, if we can't incorporate climate change into our complex public policy on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, then we have serious, serious issues that we will be confronting when we seek to draw up the next plan. So I commend the member for Goldstein for her amendments.</p> <p class="speaker">Tanya Plibersek</p><p>I want to thank the member for Goldstein for her work and the work of her office with my office and officials on proposing these amendments to the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill. The member for Goldstein has mentioned that we've only just received them this morning, and I understand the reason for that: her office has been much occupied with the very difficult situation in Israel at the moment, with many constituents requiring her attention. So I completely understand why the amendments have only just now been presented to the parliament.</p><p>While there are a number of elements here that we broadly agree with, we won't be supporting the amendments today. The government will continue to work with the member for Goldstein on the very strong issue she has on better environmental outcomes that the restoring our rivers bill is intended to produce. I want to thank her for her continued engagement. We really have seen a decade of delay on the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and one of the things that we've observed through that decade is the impact of climate change right across Australia but most particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin. We know that climate change is already impacting the basin, with record droughts punctuated by the most intense floods. Environmentally, it has been a very, very difficult time for the people living in those basin communities. Sadly, we know that climate change means that those impacts will not only continue but are likely to worsen. We don't, for a moment, discount the seriousness of the issues that the member for Goldstein is alluding to.</p><p>One of the most important things that we can do now is actually deliver on the Basin Plan to make sure that we prepare. We know we're going into another hot, dry cycle; we know that. The Bureau of Meteorology has told us that we're going into another hot, dry cycle. For the benefit of everybody whose livelihood depends on the basin, for those communities—three million people rely on this river system for their drinking water—and, of course, for the environment, we need to prepare now for those hotter, dryer times that are coming.</p><p>I want to reassure the member for Goldstein that we are taking this very seriously. We're investing $22 million to update Murray-Darling Basin science for the very reason that she's mentioned today. We're assessing the impact of climate change on the 16 Ramsar listed wetlands in the basin to support their future protection and management. We're reinstating the Sustainable Rivers Audit to track and report on the health of basin rivers. We're updating the CSIRO sustainable yields study to show how much water will be available in the future with climate change. We are doing that scientific work now. We are making those investments.</p><p>In addition, the government is investing $103.7 million in the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to review the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. This forward-looking review is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to futureproof the basin based on updated science and information. We're doing the science now, and one of the reasons we don't agree with the proposal to change the date of the review of the Water Act is because we want to get this science done and the review of the plan done. The review of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan will consider the challenge posed by climate change and set the basin up for the future, ensuring that the river system is healthy, and the basin is sustainable.</p><p>Of course, we're also going to look more broadly. The impact of climate change is not confined to the Murray-Darling Basin, so our renewed National Water Initiative will look at our water needs nationally, because we know that they will also be affected in other states and territories by the impact of climate change.</p><p>I very much understand the intent of what the member for Goldstein has moved, and we will look at some of these elements in the Senate, but for today we will not be able to support the proposals as suggested.</p> <p class="speaker">Ian Goodenough</p><p>The question is the amendments (1), (3) and (4) as moved by the member for Goldstein be agreed to.</p><p>Question negatived.</p> <p class="speaker">Zoe Daniel</p><p>I move amendment (2) as circulated in my name:</p><p class="italic">(2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 4 (line 6), omit "2027", substitute "2026".</p><p>As the minister mentioned previously, the legislation incorporates a number of reviews. Mine is simple. The existing legislation sets a review of the act for 2024. Because of the delays entrenched in this bill, the government is proposing that it be delayed until 2027. There is an argument, given what we've seen over the lifetime of the plan, that it should remain at 2024, particularly given the integrity issues within the system. As a compromise, I'm suggesting in this amendment that it be 2026, based on the advice of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and others, a year before the latest commitments for this much-delayed plan are due to be met. Transparency and accountability are paramount to the success of this plan, from my point of view, and, of course, that was a key pillar on which I and other members of the crossbench were elected.</p><p>Question negatived.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
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