Senator SIEWERT (6:10 PM) —I, and also on behalf of Senator Milne, move:

(1)   That the Senate notes:

(a)   the recommendation of the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change to ‘Build national resilience to the impacts of climate change’;

(b)   the announcement of support for the Roundtable’s recommendation by the National Farmers Federation (NFF) on 6 December 2006, stating that the ‘NFF believes that climate change may be the greatest threat confronting Australian farmers and their productive capacity’; and

(c)   the call by representatives of 16 faiths on 5 December 2006 for the Australian Government to take urgent action on climate change.

(2)   That the following matters be referred to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee for inquiry and report by 30 June 2007:

(a)   the need for a national strategy to help Australian agricultural industries to mitigate and adapt to climate change;

(b)   consideration of the risks and opportunities presented by reduced rainfall, increased temperatures, higher evaporation and increased climactic variability for Australian agriculture;

(c)   assessment of the state of existing knowledge, the relevance of current strategies, and the adequacy of existing research and development programs to the need to address impacts of climate change on the security of Australian food production and the viability of rural communities; and

(d)   the effectiveness of the National Plan for Water Security in meeting the challenges of protecting the health of our rivers, floodplains, wetlands and other dependent environments, ensuring secure water supplies for our towns and cities, and maintaining the viability of our agricultural sector.

This is an extremely important issue—so important that I acknowledge that I made an attempt to refer a similar item to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport last year. Since that time a number of other things have occurred, which has made the urgency and the requirement for this issue to be reviewed even more significant, I believe. We have had the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, commonly known as the IPCC, report again about the severity of the impacts of climate change. My colleague Senator Milne will go into more detail of those issues later. We have also had the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change make a statement on building national resilience to the impacts of climate change. We had what I think is a very significant statement from the National Farmers Federation on 6 December last year, which said:

I repeat—they have said that it is:

There was also the call by 16 faiths around Australia for the Australian government to take urgent action on climate change. That is why Senator Milne and I are seeking to refer the issues around climate change and the impacts of climate change on Australian agricultural industries and their ability to adapt to the rural, regional affairs and transport committee.

At the beginning of February I amended my motion to include:

(d)   the effectiveness of the National Plan for Water Security in meeting the challenges of protecting the health of our rivers, floodplains, wetlands and other dependent environments, ensuring secure water supplies for our towns and cities, and maintaining the viability of our agricultural sector.

I will go into some of the issues relating to water very shortly, but I would like to remind the Senate about some of the limited work that is going on in Australia into investigating and dealing with the impacts of climate change on our agricultural sector. I remind the Senate that Australian agriculture is one of the most adaptive in the world and Australian agriculture has managed to adapt to a very hostile climate. But scientists and researchers are acknowledging that agriculture is now at the stage where it cannot progressively adapt to the impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, at a political level that recognition is not coming rapidly enough. We are getting to a point where we cannot adapt anymore. We need significant investment in research into adaptive techniques so that Australian agriculture can adapt. I also remind the Senate of ABARE’s latest predictions for summer crops, which are, unfortunately, extremely depressing—they were cut yet again just a couple of weeks ago. The Queensland Farmers Federation just last year said:

In other words, they are also supporting comments by the National Farmers Federation. They also said:

They went on to say:

they were talking about Queensland in this instance—

I will yet again highlight the comments that have been made by Dr Bryson Bates, the director of the CSIRO climate change program, on research into climate change. He said:

He was speaking in the context of a question that I had asked about how much money was being invested in research into the impact of climate change. Both Senator Milne and I have in the past reminded this chamber that Australia’s senior economics research bureau is not addressing the issue of climate change. I remind the Senate that the Farmers Federation have said they believe that climate change may be the greatest threat confronting Australian farmers and their productive capacity. Yet at estimates two weeks ago, when I yet again asked ABARE what they were doing to address climate change—a continuing theme on which both Senator Milne and I have been chasing ABARE—they said:

They are only just starting to deal with it. They continued:

They have just begun that work! It is the year 2007 and they have just begun to look at the impact of climate change on agriculture. As you would probably understand, I then commented that I did not think that was appropriate. They replied:

Then I asked whether they had a time line for producing some results. The new head of ABARE, Mr Glyde, told me:

So they are still beginning to work out what they are going to be doing about climate change and its impact on agricultural systems. This government should support this review, if for no other reason than to see what Australia’s supposedly senior resource economists are doing about climate change. There is a need for a review just to do that, let alone anything else that Senator Milne and I have included in the terms of reference for this report.

Senator Milne will shortly be addressing in more detail some of the impacts of climate change, but I would like to go to the water plan and the amendment that I made to these terms of reference. I think there is an urgent need to review the national water plan—if it is going to be producing results—in particular, how it is going to be helping our agricultural sector deal with the interaction between water and climate change. As I pointed out just a little while ago, we learnt at estimates that this water plan obviously occurred sometime after November and most of the work was done in January—in other words, it was very rushed.

At estimates we asked for the calculations on the savings, the costings and the targets, but there were none. A number of us repeatedly asked the water agencies about the basis on which the water plan costings were done. But we got nothing. The only reference we were given was the plan itself. I have read the plan—in fact, a number of times—and the information provided in it is not referenced. When I asked for references, I was told to go to the plan. Where are the references on how much the water efficiency provisions are going to contribute—that is, 1,200 gigalitres, half of which goes back to farmers and the other half of which goes back to Australia? When I asked for the rationale behind those costings and the figures on water savings, they could not give them to us. They tell us they consulted experts, but they could not give us the written references, other than what is in the plan. I could have written something in a plan and then, when someone asked me to justify it, I could have said, ‘The reference is in what I have just written.’ I could have plucked any figures out of the air, written it down and then said, ‘Refer to them.’

Also, there are no targets. The only information that is there is the information in the plan that says, ‘We’ll get 1,500 gigalitres from overallocation and then we’ll get 1,200 gigalitres from the efficiency measures we’re putting in place.’ But there are no actual targets. So the only target we are going with now—the only target that is written down on paper—is the 500 gigalitres from the Living Murray target, which everybody knows was the lowest common denominator. The experts said, ‘You actually need 3,500 gigalitres to have a good chance of recovery for the Murray.’ There was also an interim figure of 1,500 gigalitres, but that gave only a chance of recovery. For a good chance of recovery, we need 3,500 gigalitres. But there are no targets. When I asked about the target, I was told, ‘We’re putting lots of water back into the river, through the water efficiency program and through the overallocation program.’ But, of course, there is nothing written down that anybody can follow to see what those figures actually are. In other words, ‘We could’ve potentially plucked figures out of the air because we don’t need a target and that’s what we’re going to deliver.’ But we still need a target.

We come to the issue of overallocation and what comes first. Are we actually going to be investing in water efficiency or the overallocation program? Of course, you do not want to be in the situation where you may have been delivering funding through the water efficiency program but then have to turn around and buy out that lease anyway. I raised that issue in estimates, and I was assured by the department, when I asked how they were going to integrate the two plans, that it would be silly if you paid Peter and robbed Paul. I was assured at the time that both of these approaches would be carefully considered. They would ‘make sure that it is integrated in an effective way’. Yet yesterday in the other place, the House of Representatives, when Mr Vaile was asked a dorothy dixer about the plan, he made it obvious what the Nats think about the plan:

In other words, he was continuing the line that the minister for agriculture has been taking all along: they are not prepared to properly invest in fixing up our river system because they do not want to upset the cockies.

Senator O’Brien —The cockies?

Senator SIEWERT —That may be a Western Australian term. Sorry, that means ‘farmers’ for those non-Western Australians here. It is: ‘We don’t want to upset the farmers. We don’t want to upset the electors in our electorates in those regions.’

Senator Stephens —So their constituents?

Senator SIEWERT —Yes, their constituents. It is: ‘We don’t want to upset them so we’ll do it as a last resort.’ So we are going back to Mr McGauran’s approach where we buy out as a last resort; we only buy that little bit of water we can get from water savings.

We come to the impact of the water holdings of the large corporate buyers who have been very strongly in the market buying up megalitres of water. I am told of one corporate entity that has at least 50,000 megalitres. Another one, I am told, potentially has 60,000 megalitres. Obviously, these allocations and entitlements were bought up for managed investment schemes and, since the ground has changed, they are now holding significant amounts of water. Are they going to be expecting the government to bail them out with the $3 billion or are they going to try to transfer that water use from less-secure water holdings to high-security water holdings, again distorting the water market? Because they have been such major players in the water market, they have actually significantly increased the cost of water, making it even harder for government to buy out, to deal with the overallocation, and for this plan to be effective. There is clearly a need to review how that is going to occur and how they are going to make the allocation decisions.

We come to the issue of how the whole plan is going to work in the first place when you consider that the Commonwealth government is taking control of water-making decisions from the states. But you cannot separate water management from natural resource management. Anybody doing NRM 101 knows that. In NRM 101, one of the first things that I did at uni was to look at catchment management and water management. If you are going to do water allocations and water management, you have to be getting involved in natural resource management. So does that mean the Commonwealth are going to start making decisions on locations of plantations, land use management plans, farm dams and clearing? There is the dreaded word ‘clearing’. Clearing has an absolutely immediate impact on water run-off, groundwater and salinity, not to mention biodiversity loss. Then you get to the tricky issues of illegal drainage. Are they going to turn a blind eye like the states have been doing? For example, in New South Wales you get environmental flows made to Ramsar-listed wetlands and the water does not even make it to the wetlands because people are so busy draining that water off, yet no action is taken. I hope the Commonwealth is going to start dealing seriously with those issues, but that is yet to be outlined. How is natural resource management going to be coordinated with water management decisions? That is not clear, and I do not think the Commonwealth has come to terms with the level of decision making that is going to be involved. It is likely, I understand, that the Commonwealth will be getting laws referred to them, but then they will be delegating to the states to make decisions. I think that is making decision making even more complex.

We come back to the issue of the CSIRO doing their assessment of catchments in order to start setting more realistic caps and deciding on overallocation. They have been given an extremely short time frame in which to make this decision. As we all know, the decision to involve the CSIRO in doing this work was made after the water summit—or the Melbourne Cup water summit, as it is commonly known—and they have been given until the end of this year to do it. It is an extremely complex area. I would suggest that the only work that they could get done in that time would be collation of the data, because that in itself is a very significant process. So how are the decisions going to be made—and by whom—on the actual data that is provided as to what is sustainable and what is not? What is a sustainable yield? How are those decisions going to be made? How will that translate into decisions made about the caps and then the caps together? What is a sustainable flow? What is an environmental flow for the Murray? That information is not clear. Of course, it will significantly impact on the outcomes and the success of the national water plan.

These issues are highly significant ones. Not one of them has been subjected to any review or scrutiny. I put to you that these issues are vital and that they need to be reviewed, particularly in the context of climate change, and that, because there is so little work being done on the impacts of climate change on our agriculture and on the interaction between our water resources and climate change, the Senate should undertake this type of review. It should look at the effectiveness of the current work being done. It should look at the effectiveness of the national water plan to deliver outcomes. Because of its rushed nature, these issues have not been adequately considered. There has not been time to adequately consider them. It was also reported during estimates that appropriate experts have not been consulted. So when will they be consulted? It is better being done up front now, while the plan is still in development—which is obviously what is happening—than in a couple of years when we have to restructure things because they got it wrong. It is time to it do now.