SUBJECTS: Tamworth water security; water buybacks; Murray-Darling Basin; Dungowan dam; Nature Repair Market.
BEN ENGLISH: I'd like now to shift our focus to our most precious resource, water. We're all aware of the catastrophic floods that inundated New South Wales over the past couple of years. But while dams are quite full, meteorologists are predicting another El Nino event, and likely another drought. So how we manage water supplies is top of mind.
Water is crucial to everyone. But as you all know, it's fundamental to the prosperity of regional communities. So, who better to speak on the topic than the Minister for Water, and also the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, who will be in conversation with The Daily Telegraph's national political editor, Clare Armstrong.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Honourable Tanya Plibersek, MP, and Clare Armstrong.
CLARE ARMSTRONG: Welcome, Minister. Thank you for being with us today on a slightly later than expected schedule. Appreciate you making the time. As we just heard from Ben there on the introduction, water is top of mind, I think always for regional communities, and you've come into this portfolio a bit over a year ago now and pretty well got stuck straight in. So that's what I'm going to do today.
We've heard just a few weeks ago from the Murray Darling Basin Authority that the goal of June 2024, getting that 750 gigalitres as promised in the plan, it's not going to happen. So I guess what does that mean for the plan and the future of the scab basin?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Thanks very much for the question, and hello to all of you. It's very lovely to be here in Tamworth again.
In a sense, people say, "Was this really a surprise?" I mean we've had more than half a dozen reports from the Murray Darling Basin Authority saying that the plan was off track, we had a Productivity Commission inquiry that said that it was off track, and so on the one hand, it wasn't a complete surprise that it would be difficult to get to where we're supposed to be by the middle of next year, June 2024.
But I did, I suppose live in hope that with the renewed focus on the plan, we were working more cooperatively with the New South Wales Government about getting their Water Resource Plans in. I thought there might be a way of achieving it. There just isn't.
By June 2024, on the current trajectory we're on, we would be about 750 gigalitres short of where we're supposed to be, and for people who don't think in gigalitres, that's about 300,000 Olympic size swimming pools short of where we're supposed to be in June 2024.
Now what does that mean? In practice there's a lot of things that are triggered by December 2023, if we're going to be short. We have to formally agree to extend the plan, otherwise a lot of the sort of automatic things that are being put in to the Murray Darling Basin Plan come into effect, and we don't really want some of those reconciliations to come into effect automatically, we think as a government the more sensible thing to do is to work with the States and Territories still to achieve the objectives of the plan, but to do it over a more reasonable time period.
And the truth is more than 80 per cent of the water that's been recovered towards the plan has been done under Labor Governments, in fact 84 per cent of water that's been recovered towards the plan has been done under Labor Governments. Only 16 per cent has happened during the last decade of the Coalition government.
So, you know, we're slow because there's been a decade of inaction.
ARMSTRONG: And you mentioned that, you know, there's a series of things that get triggered if we weren't meeting that deadline. One actually is the Commonwealth has more power to look at an option like buybacks which is obviously very controversial within the community. What's your position on buybacks to try and meet that target even at a later date?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, my position is we need to look at all viable options, and we just released yesterday another paper we had a five week consultation where we asked communities across the Murray Darling Basin for their ideas on the ground, where they live, where they work, about the best ways to deliver the plan. And we've had lots of fantastic solutions that go to things like water efficiencies, water infrastructure.
In fact, I was hoping to go and have a look at the Dungowan Pipeline after this, and that's a great example of an efficiency project that reduces water waste, that water then doesn't have to be taken out of the river system, it can be used more productivity because we're reducing leakage from 70 year old pipes.
There's projects like that across the system. There are better and more efficient ways to use water, but I don't think it would be possible to achieve the Murray Darling Basin Plan without some voluntary water purchase, and we're actually got a 44 gigalitre voluntary water purchase program at the moment, that's open at the moment, we've had people put in submissions for water that they're interested in selling, we're evaluating those at the moment, and I think there will be more of that in order to achieve the objectives of the plan. But we're not ideological about this. I have said from day one, that yes, I'm determined to achieve the objectives of the plan, but to do it in the most sensible, most consultative way that we possibly can.
ARMSTRONG: I want to come back to the pipeline in Dungowan in a moment. But just on this issue of the Basin. We've heard over the years the water wars between States within States at different end of the river system. We have an opportunity, would you say now, that there is water in the dams, we aren't necessarily in the position we were a few years ago where the years of drought had made this issue even more emotive perhaps than it is ordinarily; is this opportunity before we get to this next drought to hash out whatever the new plan is going to look like?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: One of the first bits of advice I was given when I became the Water Minister is whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over. And yeah, we've had a couple of good years, but you know, you can talk to communities in New South Wales, already the dry times, you can feel them coming back. And we know that all of the scientific evidence tells us we're going into a hotter, drier period. We need to prepare for that hotter, drier period.
I don't think there's any uncontroversial time to say we need to achieve all of the objectives of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, and part of that will include voluntary water purchase. I know that there will be people who don't like me saying that. I think it's the only responsible thing I can do is be honest about the fact that I don't see how we can achieve the objectives of the plan without that.
ARMSTRONG: And on to another issue, you touched on infrastructure, the Dungowan Pipeline that's just been completed. Another project in that area, the Dungowan Dam was formally shelved in the budget that your government put out a few months ago. That was partly looking at Infrastructure Australia obviously deemed it not a priority project, and the cost had blown out significantly, doubled to over a billion dollars.
So I guess I'm pre empting maybe some of the answers for why you cancelled that dam project,
but I suppose, what's next for the future of water security in that region, beyond the obviously important town water supply?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah. Well, we've just had a great piece of work done by the New South Wales Government looking at the Namoi Regional Water Security Strategy, and they've got some really great suggestions that we're keen to work with them on there. But just on the Dungowan Dam project, I mean this is part of the problem, where if you've got, you know, the previous government promised 100 dams, they built two. They built a 13 gigalitre dam, and a 9 gigalitre dam, so two quite small ones, one in Queensland, one in Tasmania.
So there's this incredible set of expectations that have been built up around the country, and then you come to a project like the proposal on Dungowan. Infrastructure Australia said this was the worst benefit cost ratio of any project they had ever examined. This had a benefit cost ratio of 0.09. What that means in human speak is that for every dollar of taxpayers' money or every dollar spent on this project, there would be a benefit of nine cents. You spend a dollar; you get nine cents back.
If you had that money in your wallet, I don't think you'd be spending it in that way. This is not saying that we don't have to do work on Tamworth's water security, we absolutely do. But it is also about looking at some of the more innovative proposals that we've heard from the Tamworth Council and from others about how we get better water security for Tamworth, and it's also by the choices we make about how we invest Commonwealth Government money.
One of the big changes we've made is, in the past you could only invest in these big water projects if they had an agriculture benefit or an industry benefit. If it was just for town water supply, you couldn't do it. That's one of the reasons, I suppose, that when the Chaffey Dam was built there was, you know, substantial public money that went into it, including $4 million from the Tamworth Council, but it didn't benefit Tamworth's drinking water and town water.
So, yes, you've got to have the projects, we're prepared to do that, we've got $2 billion invested in water infrastructure projects, $200 million in the last budget alone. We're prepared to invest in water infrastructure. We have to be smarter about the type of infrastructure and making sure that the benefit goes to communities as well as having just commercial uses.
ARMSTRONG: So it sounds like we're not going to get a commitment from a Labor Government in terms of 100 dams promised, but what can we expect from this Federal Government in terms of its commitment to building new dams? Will we see new dams in your term, proposed or progressed in your term as Water Minister?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, where they make sense. And if State Governments have proposals that stack up, yes. I mean we're investing some huge money, like $300 million in the Darwin water supply, I think it's $605 million, off the top of my head for Paradise Dam, there's two Tasmanian irrigation projects that we've just announced funding for. Around Australia we're prepared to invest, including in very large water infrastructure projects, where they make sense, and where they've got partners. That's the other really critical thing, we need to be able to partner with State Governments, and occasionally also with private or commercial operators as well.
ARMSTRONG: I want to touch on your other big portfolio, the environment. Last year at the Bush Summit in Griffith you announced that Labor would you pursuing a nature repair scheme essentially providing a source of income to farmers, they could get credits by doing environmental work on their property. Where is that a year on?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thanks. We did announce that, it was a terrific announcement, and I'm very grateful to the National Farmers Federation and the other farming groups that have backed this in. At the moment that legislation has passed through the House of Representatives, it's in a Senate Inquiry process, and we're hoping to, very hopeful that that legislation will pass through the Senate towards the end of the year.
What it will be, for people who didn't follow the announcement last year, is an opportunity, a little bit like the carbon market, for farmers and other land holders to do biodiversity projects on their land and get paid for it.
Now, I know that there are so many farmers out there who want to manage feral animals on their land, who want to replant on river and stream banks to improve water quality and to give habitat for the native animals and plants on their land. I know that there are farmers who want to manage invasive weeds. To be able to be paid to do those projects would be a real benefit to farming incomes. We've also said that other groups can make use of those sorts of credits as well; Native Title holders, Local Government, environmental groups could also use the Nature Repair Market. We see this as a really great complement to the carbon market where people can use part of the land that they own to provide habitat for native animals, for example, kill a few goats, cats, and actually get paid to do it.
ARMSTRONG: Wonderful. Well, I wish we had more time. There's so much more I'd love to talk to you about, but thank you so much, Tanya Plibersek, Minister for Water and environment. It's been a pleasure speaking to you.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thank you. And thank you all for having me.
