Election 2022: Water policy left high and dry

The Murray Darling Basin, Australia’s most important natural resource, is home to 16 internationally significant wetlands, 35 endangered species and 98 different species of waterbirds. It is the beating heart of our regions and sustains more than 40% of national food production.

And yet despite the many pressing issues confronting the Basin — and water management more generally — it has been barely visible in the recent politicking. For the most part, it seems, we are having a dry election.

The Liberal party has a policy on agriculture and fisheries that states ‘no fisheries solely managed by the commonwealth will be overfished’. (The Liberals have also committed to maintaining ‘our robust Australian Marine Park network in its current form’.) Federal water minister?Keith Pitt was reported in?The Advertiser ?as saying ‘We remain committed to the Murray-Darling Basin as it was negotiated’.

But on the?Liberal Party’s 2022 election platform website , where we noticed policies on forestry, resources, roads and modern manufacturing, we couldn’t find an election policy on water or the Basin.

The major parties have not, however, been entirely silent on water.

Early in the campaign, the ALP announced (in the marginal South Australian seat of Boothby) it would ‘Safeguard the Murray Darling Basin ’. Labor committed to delivering on the 450GL ‘upper target’ for the Basin.

Labor also committed to restoring transparency, integrity and confidence in water markets and water management; increasing compliance, metering and monitoring; and updating the scientific understanding of how climate change will affect the Ramsar wetlands in the lower lakes.

Federal Opposition leader Anthony Albanese tweeted on 8?April 2002, ‘I’m in Adelaide today to announce that a Labor Government will uphold the Murray Darling Basin Plan, deliver South Australia’s share of water and establish a National Water Commission’.

Laudably, Labor committed to increasing First Nations water ownership and involvement in water-related decision-making — two urgent issues that have been left off the priority agenda for far too long.

The?National Party has released plans ?for agriculture and fisheries, resources, forestry, tourism and defence. The Nationals have said,?inter alia, that a re-elected Coalition government would ‘Remain committed to the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan; continue to enable the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to deliver environmental water to SA; and support the Inspector-General of Water Compliance as a cop on the beat to ensure compliance and enforcement with the Basin Plan’.

In 2021, in an effort to shake up the Coalition position on the Basin Plan, the Nationals attempted to bring forward legislation to remove the 450GL target, stop water rights buybacks and extend timelines for water savings. The SA Liberal senators, including frontbenchers Anne Ruston and Simon Birmingham, were evidently appalled. They issued a strongly worded statement that the Coalition remained committed to delivering the Basin Plan in full and on time.

For the current election,?the Greens have policies ?for ‘protecting the environment and animals’, ‘stronger environmental laws’, ‘swimmable rivers’ and ‘protecting our oceans’. The Greens’ plans include greening Australia by investing $24.4 billion over the next decade (funded via a ‘billionaires’ tax’), saving the Murray-Darling Basin through water recovery targets and water buybacks, and creating an independent water watchdog.

Independents are also having a big impact in Basin electorates.

Perhaps the best example of this is Nicholls, which covers the Goulburn Valley’s ‘Fruit Bowl’. Formerly held by Nationals MP Damien Drum, the seat is now the subject of a three-cornered contest between the Liberals, the Nationals and independent businesses leader?Rob Priestly .

Priestly has assembled a powerful and diverse support base of First Nations people, small business owners and public servants, among others.

Priestly has put water and the Basin front and centre of his campaign. Like the Nationals, he is advocating for an end to buybacks. And like Labor, he is pushing for improved water market transparency.

On 6 May 2002, even though water had received scant attention in the election as a whole, Priestly told the ABC’s Warwick Long it was still a hot-button issue. Rural people, Priestly said, were ‘upset [and feeling] let down about water policy and how it has been managed in the past’.

In February 2021,?the ACCC plonked a 700-page doorstopper ?on treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s desk. The damning report into Australia’s $26 billion water market (from an inquiry that was a government commitment in the previous federal election) found, among other things, that there were ‘scant rules governing the conduct of market participants, and no particular body to oversee trading activities in fair and efficient markets’.

The report took 19 months to produce and contains 29 recommendations — but the commonwealth government is yet to formally respond. Fifteen months have now passed since the report was released, and the silence is deafening for Basin communities.

The federal minister for resources and water has appointed a ‘principal adviser’ and an advisory group to map out a pathway for water market reform, having regard to the ACCC’s recommendations.

The principal adviser’s reform ‘roadmap’ is due to be delivered after the election, but that should not be a reason to defer the water debate. Water management in the Basin has suffered from a succession of disastrous policy failures.

Without debate and a fulsome reckoning, that deplorable pattern will continue. It’s time for water to receive the attention it deserves.

By Scott Hamilton & Stuart Kells

This is an excerpt from an article first?published in The Mandarin (Premium) on 16 May 2022.

Scott Hamilton and Stuart Kells are the authors of ‘Sold Down The River ’ (Text Publishing).

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