Water, water, everywhere, and treated you could drink it, or untreated use it for agriculture or drive turbines for power. From my front window I have twice in the last year seen the Balonne River in flood, surging to some 330,000 megalitres a day. About 500,000 megalitres fills Sydney Harbour.
Floods are flowing into houses when they should be flowing into weirs and dams for later, more beneficial use. In a couple of years there will be another drought and the response will be to blame everything, in the belief that the world has changed permanently and we poor souls are helpless and hopeless. The reality is that we were imprudent and did not do the hard work to build the appropriate infrastructure to mitigate against drought and reduce flood damage.
Julia Gillard's initial response to the floods was to send $1 million for relief. She spent in excess of 16,000 times as much to build school halls. Houses to live in and dams for our future should take precedence.
Our water policy must have the foresight to build infrastructure to store and move water. Australia is only too happy to build the infrastructure to take water out of the Murray-Darling Basin in order to send it to Melbourne, Adelaide and Broken Hill. How about instead we start building infrastructure to put water into the basin, or at least to store the part that does the damage to people's houses and lives?
The Coalition's water policy will come in four major parts, on top of the $10 billion the Howard government provided for the upgrade of infrastructure and water purchases to deal with over-allocation in the Murray-Darling Basin.
First, it will allocate $500 million in seed capital. This will go to areas as diverse as water infrastructure and research into plant genetics, with the aim of delivering or storing more water without reducing the present average volume at the mouth of the Murray. In its natural condition, drought leads to dry sand at the bottom of the river and not many fish breathe air, so the environment might be pristine but barren. During the middle of the last drought, water was still on the river floor due to the weirs and dams upstream.
Second, a key part of the Coalition policy is the Infrastructure Partnership Scheme. This is based partially on the municipal bonds system in the US, and allows for a 10 per cent reduction on the relevant tax paid on profits in these ventures.
If a superannuation fund built a dam and sold the water to industry, homes and farms, then these profits would be taxed only 5 per cent. Such a dam would not necessarily have to be built in the Murray-Darling Basin. If it has the potential to be a nation-building project, it could be built anywhere. There is about $1.4 trillion in superannuation savings; water infrastructure may well attract some of these dollars, thus reinvesting our savings in our nation.
Third, I recently made an announcement on the Murrumbidgee near Griffith that the Coalition would ask a panel of engineers to determine the most appropriate and cost-effective sites to construct dams. These decisions will be based not on political considerations but solely on an engineering basis. We know full well that a decision is never easy when dealing with water.
Lastly, both the Coalition and Labor have promised that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan would deliver a bottom-line outcome of social, economic and environmental equivalence. However, it appears that the Water Act is drafted in such a way that it precludes this. For example, section 44 (5) of the act prevents the minister from asking for changes to give greater protection to regional economies in the basin.
That there are problems in the Water Act is not just my view, but the view of George Williams of the faculty of law at the University of NSW, the economist and ex-University of Melbourne professor Judith Sloan, and the Sydney barrister Josephine Kelly. Most importantly, the former head of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Mike Taylor, is said to have given up his job because of this dilemma.
There must not be any sacred cow legislation; if the Water Act has unforeseen detrimental effects, then we must amend the act. It would not be the first act since Federation to be amended.
I asked for an investigation into ambiguities in the Water Act but Labor, the Greens and an independent voted against it. I sent a letter to Tony Windsor to see if his committee would investigate it, and have had no reply.
Fresh water is the source of renewable wealth, affordable food, green lawns and clean cars. Let us make water as accessible and affordable as possible, and move on from the present naive water policy of building nothing new, shutting down towns or taxing it. Build dams to store water, then move it and use it wisely. I reckon we're a clever enough country to do that.
Senator Barnaby Joyce is the Coalition spokesman for regional development, local government and water.
Email a friend