Mr D. L. PAGE (Ballina) [8.56 p.m.]: I move:

That this House censures the Minister for Land and Water Conservation for:

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(a) his gross mismanagement of rural water policy in this State;

(b) his policies that run counter to the Premier's pro-food strategy for New South Wales;

(c) notes with great concern the impact of the Minister's water policies on income and investment in New South Wales; and

(d) calls on the Minister for Land and Water Conservation to modify his water policies to fit the realities of providing, in a more flexible way, the water needs of both industry and the environment.

In October last year I gave notice of this motion. The Government has since used a series of delaying tactics to try to keep this incompetent Minister from parliamentary scrutiny. After approximately six months it is nice at last to debate this matter. An examination of Hansard reveals that from the time this Minister entered Parliament in 1991, when he was an Opposition member, he did not make one contribution by way of parliamentary speech on rural water issues.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is far too much audible conversation in the Chamber. Members wishing to converse should do so outside the Chamber.

Mr D. L. PAGE: This Minister, who made not one contribution of parliamentary debate on rural matters in his time in opposition, was appointed the Minister responsible for the complex area of rural water management in New South Wales. The people of New South Wales have a city-based Minister with no knowledge of rural water issues making decisions that affect millions of dollars worth of investments and hundreds of jobs in this State. This Minister has a totally inflexible approach to implementing water policies in New South Wales. His approach to the implementation of the Murray-Darling cap, which was introduced a few years ago initially for one year and subsequently extended for two years, has been very inflexible and certainly has not assisted New South Wales. In fact, his approach has driven jobs from New South Wales into other States, which have adopted a more flexible approach.

A good example of what I am talking about has been the absolute fiasco in the Cudgegong Valley and the Macquarie Valley, where more than $50 million worth of horticultural investment has been in the pipeline, which would have generated investment of about $250 million a year. Yet for two years this Minister has dithered and has not been prepared to take a flexible approach. He knew that there was excess water in the Cudgegong Valley and an overallocation in the Macquarie Valley. The obvious solution was to manage the two valleys together. Headlines in the media suggest lost opportunities and growers are asking why it took so long. The Minister should not get too cocky about his belated attempt to regain credibility after two years by announcing a minor adjustment to his policy. In any event, that policy will last only until June this year.

The Minister has another think coming if he is of the view that people will invest $50 million to $60 million on the basis of action that will expire at the end of June. It is ironic that the same water the Minister has been denying the horticultural industry in the Cudgegong Valley is flowing into South Australia. The water that could be used in New South Wales will be used in South Australia because the South Australian Government has a different approach to that of the Minister. The Minister is exporting jobs and investment and giving them to other States. I should like to quote from a letter sent to me by the Executive Officer of the Mudgee Region Business Centre, Margaret Thomas, who stated:

The loss of around 300 potential jobs and $80m in investment is not underestimating the impact of the economic damage the current water licensing difficulties is causing to this region.

That is only one region. Unlike the coalition, which has a balanced approach to water flows between the environment and industry, this Minister has no commonsense or balanced decision making about water allocations. In short, he has lost the confidence of rural producers in New South Wales. He has done more to damage the relationship between government and farmers than any other single person, and he did not even need John Laws to do that. Kimberley Maxwell Yeadon has a narrow focus and is implementing an inflexible political agenda, regardless of its impact on the economy. He is doing all this under the guise of helping the environment, when in many cases he is actually harming the environment by flooding it with excess water.

At a time when the Premier is promoting a pro-food strategy for New South Wales, this Minister, through his misguided water policies, has been actively cutting back on the production of food and fibre in New South Wales by denying food producers the one ingredient they need when they need it - water. Ian Douglas, President of the Ricegrowers Association of Australia, in referring to the current Minister's water policy, said:

It totally contradicts the Premier's announcement establishing Pro-Food NSW to identify new food growing areas, expand the MIA, allocate Government and private resources and help develop new processing and marketing opportunities.

That was in the Rural News of October last year. In this context it is worth remembering that in the relationship between water allocation and production in the rice industry every 1 per cent of water resource not available to rice growers costs the
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industry $3 million in lost production. In a letter dated 8 October to the Minister, the Chairman of the Twynam Pastoral Company said:

Your department could have and should have been updating allocation levels over the last two months. The lack of doing so has cost this State productivity and jobs. It is important for farmers to prepare for summer crops now. One month ago yes, now NO.

I wish to quote further on the Minister's mismanagement of water allocation. I refer to an excellent article in the Sydney Morning Herald of 16 September 1996, in which Garry Donovan, Executive Director of the New South Wales Irrigators Council, said:

Volatile water policy is causing Asian markets particularly, and domestic supermarket chains, to waver in contract negotiations because of alarming signals about price stability and continuity of supply.

New South Wales rice growers have also slammed the Minister's water policy. They have complained that farmers are being kept in the dark at the very time they need to decide how many hectares to plant. The Executive Director of the New South Wales branch of the Ricegrowers Association of Australia, Mike Hedditch, has complained that the Minister has implemented a stupid notion of wet and dry season caps which have created confusion and uncertainty. He said that the major problem is that this takes a retrospective view of climatic conditions after irrigators have made decisions on their cropping programs. Similar concerns have been expressed by Ian Donges, President of the New South Wales Farmers Association. He pointed out that the Minister is adopting a system of averaging water allocations, where they will be able to tell irrigators at the end of the season how much water they needed for that season. It is hard to believe that anyone could take such an unintelligent approach, but that is the Minister's approach.

To compound the problem, the Minister has placed an embargo on the issuing of new water licences in New South Wales. This is an extremely blunt instrument because it does not allow for changing circumstances in various catchments where water is available and new industries need to develop. It is all right to have a cap or an embargo short term, but it is not acceptable long term because it distorts allocation of resources, both economic and natural, such as water. One must have flexibility to have change. If there is excess water, one needs to be able to access it. If there is a shortage of water, proper measures are required. But that also has not been the Minister's approach.

I now turn to the Minister's handling of water prices. One would have expected his actions to have been driven by Australian Labor Party policy. So what does ALP policy say? It depends on which policy one looks at because there are two. One was put out before the election last year and was written by Richard Amery as the shadow minister. The other policy was put out just prior to the election and no-one saw it, certainly not the water users. The policy document sold to water users - a fairly benign document - recognised that as far as pricing was concerned, prices ought to be set at a level that is not too onerous for users, as full user-pays or cost recovery would be. That is an interesting comment when one considers the number of times the Minister has said that the basis of his water policy has been to achieve full cost recovery.

The initial Australian Labor Party policy was that one did not need to look at full cost recovery. Indeed, it went further and said that infrastructure debt costs should be met by the State as a whole, as it does for public transport, hospitals and other individual authorities. From reading the original Labor Party policy one could assume that a Labor government would not have embarked on massive price hikes in August 1995 of the order of 86 per cent to 90 per cent, which were introduced after Labor came to office. Even the latter policy of March 1995, the one just prior to the election, referred to privatisation being a terrible thing in the United Kingdom because the price of water had increased by 5 per cent. The Labor Party has only been in office 10 minutes and it has put up the price of water by 86 per cent. An important point relating to the Minister's approach to the implementation of water pricing is that he introduced it as a blanket policy across the State. I refer to a press release dated 25 October by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal. It stated:

Because of the fundamental differences in water availability, cost of supply, and environmental conditions between regions of New South Wales, water charges should also vary between regions.

Yet the Minister implemented a blanket policy across the State of charging $1.35 per megalitre for all water users on regulated rivers. He indicated clearly that he was prepared to implement a policy that ran counter to what the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal was recommending. The coalition says that the Minister for Land and Water Conservation has got the blanket approach wrong and that the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal has also said that what he has done is wrong in principle. This gives the lie to the Minister's outrageous claim on 26 June last year that the tribunal endorsed his $1.35 per megalitre charge. Far from endorsing it, the tribunal told me that it could not do anything about the charge because it was a ministerial decision. Afterwards the tribunal
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said to me that it should not have been a blanket policy.

The Minister has not been consistent in principle with what the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal is recommending. To justify his water pricing hikes no doubt the Minister will say that he is implementing the agreement of the Council of Australian Governments signed off by the coalition Government. Actually it was not signed off by the coalition Government. If the Minister looks at the facts he will see that the COAG agreement on water pricing shows that he has been misrepresenting everybody, including this Parliament, on that issue. Examination of the communique released on 25 February 1994, when the coalition was in government, revealed that only Queensland, South Australia and Victoria endorsed water-pricing principles based on full cost recovery. They did that with reservations. New South Wales and Victoria specifically did not endorse full cost recovery when the coalition was in office.

The Carr Government signed off on endorsing the principle of full cost recovery on behalf of the New South Wales Government at the COAG meeting held in Canberra on 11 April 1995 - after the Carr Government came to office. Full cost recovery was endorsed by the Carr Government. The coalition Government agreed to the public release of a report; that is all, no more and no less. The Carr Government endorsed full cost recovery as a concept. I believe that the Minister misled the House on this important issue. If the Premier has altered this State's ability to control its destiny over water pricing, then that is something he and his Government have done, and it should not be attributed to the previous Government.

Last year the Minister told the House that even with his $1.35 per megalitre price hike New South Wales was still only at 30 per cent of full cost recovery. If the Minister is correct, and I doubt it, one can assume that we could be looking at a threefold increase in the price of water by 2001. The last price hikes imposed by this Government were done without any knowledge of what it meant to industry's viability and without any rural community impact statement. These hikes would affect not only business viability but also the price of food, which over time would rise significantly. The Government's so-called water reform package is ostensibly driven by COAG decisions. I argue that the linkages between the two are tenuous and selective. The two issues addressed in the Government's reform package released in August 1995 are water charges and environmental allocation. It is a fact that the 1994 COAG agreement on water policy was heavily qualified in April 1995 with a key recommendation from the working group that:

. . . the costs of public benefits/impact management which are unable to be attributed and charged to specific beneficiaries/impactors be treated as community service obligations.

That CSO concept was talked about and recommended by the working group. Furthermore the chair of the working group, Sir Eric Neal, talking about full cost recovery at a Tamworth water forum in September 1995, stated:

It therefore enshrined in the principles the need -

[Time expired.]

Mr YEADON (Granville - Minister for Land and Water Conservation) [9.11 p.m.]: If the health of our rivers and the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in New South Wales were not issues of paramount importance, this motion would be simply laughable. Frankly I am amazed that those opposite can sit and point the finger at me, when I, on behalf of the Government, am the first person to take an active interest in the future of this State's most precious commodity - water.

[Interruption]

You people opposite squibbed, you did absolutely nothing in the eight years that you were in government. Let us all remember that it was the New South Wales Opposition which, when in government, sat around for eight years and continued to over-allocate water from rivers. The former Government thought it was protecting its constituencies, but it was wrong. The former Government sat around and did nothing - and this is not my opinion alone, it is the message I consistently receive from rural New South Wales when I am out and about.

Mr Cochran: They kick you out of the place every time you go out there.

Mr YEADON: I had a very enjoyable day in the Monaro electorate about a month ago. I was very well received, indeed. I am told by people in rural New South Wales that our rivers and lands were deteriorating rapidly - and they were; and they still are.

Mr Cochran: Who told you, Jeff Angel?

Mr YEADON: No, your constituents. I was at Braidwood a month ago and had a close and qualitative look at some issues in the Monaro electorate which prevail there as in most electorates. The former Government's inaction was chronic, to such an extent that 260,000 hectares of land are affected by dry land salinity in New South Wales
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and a further 5 million hectares - 6 per cent of the State - at risk of dry land salinity. New South Wales is estimated to lose $65 million per year in irrigated production as a result of salinity problems.

[Interruption]

The honourable member for Murrumbidgee is talking to his colleagues. He knows, as well as I, that 17 per cent of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area is affected by degradation, and 34 per cent within that 17 per cent is non-arable. That comes from the report on the state of the environment endorsed by the Federal Minister for the Environment, Senator Robert Hill. The growth in dry land salinity in New South Wales alone could add an extra 2 million tonnes of salt a year to streams in our section of the Murray-Darling Basin. The Murray-Darling Basin Commission found that every ten minutes a semitrailer-load of salt passes the Murray River monitoring station at Morgan in South Australia. That report from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission found that salinity in the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers is rising by 1.5 per cent every year.

The Opposition was content to sit back and watch blue-green algae grow - and let me tell you, its water management practices meant it had ample opportunity to do just that. In the middle of its term New South Wales rivers became notorious, receiving world-wide headlines exclaiming shock at the largest ever event of blue-green algae - over 1,000 kilometres long. That is an absolute shame. Our water resources are too important for us to let this happen again. I do not resile from the fact that there has been a significant change in attitude towards rivers since the Carr Government was elected. These changes should not have come as a surprise; the Fahey Government was not doing a good enough job. In fact, water resource management had reached a crisis point in New South Wales. The Government's approach was clearly outlined in its election platform.

The Government has always believed that, as one of the world's driest nations, Australia faces unique water challenges; challenges that the Government is not afraid to face. We cannot continue to treat water as an infinite resource, it is that simple. As a result of this simple equation, a number of different policies are being implemented which are all aimed at ensuring consistent outcomes: the sustainability of our agriculture and the health of our rivers. That is one thing that people on the other side of the Chamber need to understand. At the end of the day that is not some fashionable, dreamy initiative or debate, it is about sustainable agriculture, sustainable primary production, and the future health of constituents, particularly those of the honourable member for Murrumbidgee.

It is about time the honourable member for Ballina and his colleagues recognised that the future viability of agriculture is dependent upon the viability of natural resources that underpin it and sustain it - water, soils and their ultimate interaction. While the honourable member for Ballina is calling for a ban on helium balloons at sporting functions to protect the dolphins - certainly a worthy cause - massive areas of New South Wales are facing serious degradation problems exacerbated by the former Government's inaction. I ask the honourable member for Ballina to pay a little more attention to the big picture.

Mr DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Order! The honourable member for Ballina will have the opportunity to reply later in the debate.

Mr YEADON: While productivity remains high in some areas of the State, in others people are struggling to sustain, and to be sustained by, their traditional farming enterprises. Coalition members from country New South Wales know that because they are sitting there looking at it. They know it as well as I do. Significant irrigation areas of the Murray-Darling Basin, this nation's food basket, are unsustainable.

Mr Cruickshank: Rubbish!

Mr YEADON: Seven per cent of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area is affected; 34 per cent within that 17 per cent is non-arable. Coalition members should start to comprehend and understand it.

Mr Cruickshank: You do not understand anything about it.

Mr YEADON: Yes I do. You do not. You bury your head in the sand.

Mr DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Order! If the honourable member for Monaro wishes to debate the issue he can do it outside the Chamber.

Mr YEADON: Our challenge as the Government of the day is to optimise agricultural productivity - I emphasise that - but to do so within the bounds of sustained natural resource health. I cannot understand why the desperate need for re-evaluation is not clear to members opposite. We simply cannot continue to manage the State's natural resources in the ad hoc way they were doing in government. The question I have for the House is: how can they bury their heads in the sand and refuse to recognise the true interests of the constituents that many coalition members purport to represent? They are not representing their constituents. They are selling them down the river. Surely they must
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understand that government policy in natural resources must be about more than a quick-fix solution. I cannot stress this enough: we as a government are not afraid to make the hard decisions for the future of the State and for the future of the constituents of members opposite.

Natural resource management is perhaps the Government's key illustration of its dedication to addressing issues that have long been neglected by those opposite. Far from running contrary to the Premier's pro-food strategy, our reforms underpin that strategy. Investment in agriculture will be attracted to a State which can demonstrate that its resources are being used sustainably. Investment will not occur in circumstances in which water supply is of poor quality, is wilfully overallocated, or is unreliable. It is that simple. Unlike members opposite, the Government has a vision for sustainable natural resource management for New South Wales and a vision for sustainable primary production. Our vision focuses on three key outcomes: a healthy and vibrant natural resource base for the benefit of future generations; industries using natural resources being efficient and competitive in the future; and a social structure that supports, and is supported by, all of those outcomes.

Mr Fraser: Come out and talk to the real people, Kim.

Mr YEADON: I am out there all the time, unlike you people when you were in government. You never went near anybody. Every time I roll up at places such as Braidwood and areas down into the Riverina - all areas within the State - people say, "Minister, it is delightful to see you. We have not seen a Minister here for decades." Opposition members should nominate the coalition Minister who visited Braidwood.

Mr DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Order! The Minister will address his comments through the Chair.

Mr YEADON: There was not a single one. We are at a critical turning point in natural resource management in this State. Reform is not easy; in fact it is difficult - difficult because the honourable member for Ballina and his colleagues were too weak to even start the reform process, let alone take it anywhere. Yet all the alarm bells in rural New South Wales had been ringing for a considerable period. We have indeed moved quickly to address the declining state of rural water. We still have a long way to go. The problems created during the past 100 years cannot be fixed in 15 minutes. For the benefit of the honourable member for Ballina I will now outline some of the considered measures the Government has undertaken. New South Wales, as a player in the Murray-Darling Basin ministerial council, is implementing an interim cap on diversions within the basin.

I reiterate that all States agreed to cap diversions for an interim period at 1993-94 levels of development. I add that though this cap limits the amount of water available, it does not limit the ability for industry development using options such as water efficiency measures or purchase of water on the transfer market - something the Government will also be reforming to the benefit of irrigators. That is another thing coalition members did not address. A case in point is the Cudgegong Valley, which was named by my colleague. The Government has freed up the transfer market in the wine-growing districts around Mudgee and the Cudgegong. People travelling to that valley will find significant areas of new vines being established. Honourable members opposite should do themselves a favour and have a look. In September 1995 I released a comprehensive water reform package.

Mr D. L. Page: It was two years too late.

Mr YEADON: Too late? You spent eight years doing nothing. It initiated immediate action in the Gwydir and Macquarie valleys. It was in the main an outline of the direction this Government intends to head. It signalled consultation and the process we will implement, which will determine a healthy balance of our water resource between users and the environment. Establishment of a high-level water task force from the Department of Land and Water Conservation is progressing the issue of water access rights, freeing up the water transfer market to allow for new industry and development. That is a key issue. Under the system that the coalition predominated over and did nothing about there was no ability for new development because we had reached saturation point for water use.

Mr D. L. Page: Not in every valley. That is what you do not understand.

Mr YEADON: Each valley will be dealt with on its merits.

Mr D. L. Page: Ah!

Mr YEADON: Okay, Mr Smartypants, what about in those valleys where it has reached saturation? How are you going to ensure new development? You had no policy, you had no approach, you had no ideas, you had no vision - you had nothing.

Mr DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Order! The Minister will address his comments through the Chair.

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Mr YEADON: New South Wales is also committed to implementing Council of Australian Governments reforms to water management. I would have expected that those opposite would join in supporting our commitment to these reforms, given that they signed us up to the process of water pricing. Game, set and match. They signed us up and they did nothing. They wanted to look like they were doing something, but they were doing nothing. These reforms are integral to every water user in New South Wales. Two years ago, shortly after the Government was elected, the Premier and Ministers went on a drought tour. Everywhere we went people said, "Thank God there is a new Government because the coalition Minister responsible for water" - the then Minister for Conservation and Land Management, the honourable member for Upper Hunter - "was a really nice guy but he just would not make a decision. He was doing nothing. George cannot make a decision." [Time expired.]

Mr SMALL (Murray) [9.26 p.m.]: In the 12-odd years that I have been a member of this Parliament I have never been so insulted. That address by the Minister for Land and Water Conservation was the most appalling I have ever heard. He criticised farmers, timber industry workers and the rural community. He said that coalition members had neglected rural areas and had been inactive. The speech was a disgrace. I am pleased to be able to speak in support - even if it is only for five minutes - of the shadow minister for land and water conservation, the honourable member for Ballina. I have been on the land for some 45 years and been involved with development in irrigation, rice, cattle and wheat. It was disgraceful that the Minister should have put down country people in the terms he used.

Mr Yeadon: I put you down, not country people.

Mr SMALL: You are just a new boy on the block. You have been here for two years. You have caused disaster in this State. You are the most unpopular Minister. I have never heard such untruth as the claim that people are pleased to see the Minister. People would be only too pleased to see him to hear him explain the problems he has created. Looking back over the years I proudly recall land and water management plans, irrigation privatisation, tree planting and other cultivation, and pasture development through improved fertilisers releasing nitrogen and phosphates into the soil. It is a disgrace that the Minister, a member of the seaboard Labor Government of today, should make allegations about previous governments and other members of Parliament.

Our forefathers worked hard to develop the land and establish an irrigation system. Their efforts helped develop New South Wales and Australia, fed our people, and secured the export income earning capacity of this nation. But the Minister puts them down. The Minister has reached a cap agreement whereby the amount of water used is identified but not exceeded. The Minister has introduced not so much a cap but a cut, given that the amount of water identified as being within the Murray River system is 92 per cent, not 100 per cent, of the water being used.

The Minister has already lost four senior personnel, but those who have not yet left him have explained the situation to me. The Minister has taken 8 per cent of production from the Murray River system and 19 per cent out of the Murray irrigation system. That means that a total of $300 million has been stripped from eight shires and 12 towns in that area. The Minister wants to destroy industry and create unemployment. He has proven he has no idea of good management. He cannot manage his portfolio. The Minister is being destructive.

Since the day the Minister took over the portfolio he has reduced land use and the amount of water available. Families who are conscious of the need to help the environment but who are trying to survive are suffering from reduced production. Thousands of years ago Wakool, Swan Hill and Lake Alexandrina in South Australia were part of the seabed. Irrigation areas which were opened up, whether by good or poor management, contained natural salt. Irrigation has resulted in increasing levels of salt in soils, but that problem is being managed by farmers in a unique way with initiative and efficiency. Under former Ministers and through the initiatives of the Department of Water Resources wonderful things happened. This Minister is a disgrace. I support this censure motion.

Mr GAUDRY (Newcastle) [9.31 p.m.]: This morning as I drove to the city from Newcastle I had the advantage of listening to Dr David Suzuki, the noted environmentalist and scientist, who is dedicated to sustainability of world resources. An issue of great concern to Dr Suzuki is degradation of land and water resources. The honourable member for Murray quite rightly pointed out the impact of 200 years on the very fragile continent of Australia. The Minister should be applauded for dealing with the problems of land degradation and depletion of our water resources.

The Minister and his department have taken the hard decisions to look at water resources. They recognise that water is a finite resource whose sustainability must be ensured, and that if agriculture
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is to continue in a fragile resource area we need to look at water delivery capacity to ensure sustainable product. For the last few years our society has been confronted with the undeniable fact that that finite resource is hitting the wall. As a member of the land and water committee and the environment committee and as someone involved in examining water resource issues in this and the previous Parliament, I found nothing more striking than the condition of the Darling River. A few years ago when I flew over that area I saw blue-green algal bloom for 1,000 kilometres along the river. Water resources in this country have been pushed to a point which necessitates effective management. I am sure this House will congratulate the Minister on the move to a much more effective water resource regime in this country.

Far from condemning the Minister's handling of the water portfolio, this House should be commending him on the work and dedication that he has put into working with the community, with water users and the department to establish a proper natural resource management regime in this country. Since this Government came to power honourable members have examined the decline of our rivers and their sustainable management. At the same time the Government has recognised that we need a vital rural economy. As the Minister said, when he and the Premier visited rural communities they were given a clear indication that those communities were keen for reform in this regard.

It may have been difficult for diverse water users to come to terms with that, but certainly they accepted the need for effective management. Back in 1994 governments throughout Australia endorsed an agreement through the Council of Australian Governments - COAG - on water reform, including pricing and environmental flows. From that time the Minister, his ministry and departments have been following that principle through in a logical fashion to ensure effective resource management, sustainable agriculture and an effective pricing mechanism that reflects the user-pays principle. There is no doubt that the time has come when that has to occur. [Time expired.]

Mr CRUICKSHANK (Murrumbidgee) [9.36 p.m.]: I have never heard so much rubbish in all my life as what I heard from the Minister. Poor old Bryce is mouthing a lot of good motherhood stuff. The trouble is, Bryce, the cockies thought of it long before you ever got hold of it.

Ms Hall: On a point of order. The honourable member is addressing an honourable member by his first name rather than in the correct fashion.

Mr DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Order! I uphold the point of order.

Mr CRUICKSHANK: The honourable member for Newcastle did not object. You have made your point, useless though it may have been. It grieves me to have to speak in this debate about the most disliked Minister ever to visit the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. I will confine my comments to the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area because I know the area and I know the people. I also know members of the Australian Labor Party there. The Minister for Land and Water Conservation often refers to the welcome he receives in the MIA. I think that the ALP in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area might have something to say about that. No other Minister has been so despised in the MIA as the Minister who is the subject of this motion today. He and I were members of the same committee for four or five years and I thought he was not a bad sort of bloke - until he was appointed Minister. How power corrupts! This know-all Minister was offered all the help under the sun by my colleagues and he spurned it all; he would not take advice from anyone. This great centralist, an avowed Stalinist and admirer of Stalin -

Mr Yeadon: No, I am not a Stalinist.

Mr CRUICKSHANK: You told me, Minister. Do not say that you did not say it. To put this Minister in charge of irrigation is to insult the farmers, irrigators and the people of New South Wales. It is an insult that someone with a shop-steward mind and no imagination whatsoever should be put in charge. He thinks he is helping the future of irrigators in this State. As I said earlier to the honourable member for Newcastle, the irrigators thought of it long before he did. The Minister said in this Chamber that the former Government did nothing. That is rubbish. We rectified 45 years of Labor rule in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, 45 years of untold corruption and manipulation. It was not what one knew but who one knew that mattered. If a farmer wanted a bigger farm or more water -

Mr Yeadon: I hope you propose to publicise this back home.

Mr CRUICKSHANK: The local community knows about it and that is why they welcomed the major reforms introduced by the Greiner-Murray Government in an attempt to rectify the situation after 45 years of Labor rule and patronage in that area. The former Government sought to rectify the situation brought about by the Labor Party. There was no sinking fund and no money to repair the structures. Nothing was ever done; it was all straight
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out of the pot. When the former Government came to office it found a $30 million bill sitting in a bottom drawer in the office of the Minister for Water Conservation. It related to money owed to the Treasury as a result of the auction system for water pricing in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. The Minister, in concert with his ideology, wants to bring the whole lot back to Macquarie Street where he can control it; where he can say what will happen.

The Minister thinks he has all the answers to salination, the environment and sustainable agriculture. They had been thought of long before he came on the scene. I wonder whether the Minister has seen the thousands and thousands of trees that have been planted in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. They were not planted by the Government; they were planted by the irrigators. The Minister spoke about water being a finite resource. We know it is a finite resource. When the former Government came to office it instituted the transferability of water rights, which was a great way to make better use of water. The former Labor Government would not allow it but those rights are now freely tradeable, one to the other. If the Minister does not regard that as efficient use of water, he does not know anything about it. [Time expired.]

Mr MARKHAM (Keira) [9.41 p.m.]: I express my amazement at this motion. It is quite unbelievable that the Opposition would talk about mismanagement of rural water policy. Let me examine the Opposition's proud record! First, under its administration there was the 1,000 kilometre-long, blue-green algae outbreak along the Darling River.

Mr Cochran: Who wrote this?

Mr MARKHAM: Do not ask me who wrote it. I went out to have a look at the outbreak because the Aboriginal communities along that river were complaining about mismanagement of the Darling-Murray river system.

Mr Cochran: You would not have a clue. What are their names? Name them.

Mr MARKHAM: The Barkindji tribe. Do you know what the Barkindji tribe is?

Mr Cochran: I have never heard of it.

Mr MARKHAM: That is right. The honourable member for Monaro is denigrating the Barkindji tribe in this House tonight by saying that it would not know what it is talking about.

Mr Cochran: I said that you would not know.

Mr MARKHAM: You said that it would not know what it is talking about. That is what is wrong with the Opposition. When in office it did not know what to do. We now have a Minister who knows what to do and those opposite are wasting the time of this House with an absolutely idiotic censure motion. The Minister for Land and Water Conservation has probably done more in two years than members of the Opposition have done in 50 years. We have been in this country for 209 years and it has taken 209 years for us to ruin the river systems. Members on the opposite side of the House have done nothing to help. They continue to ruin the New South Wales and Australian river systems because they do not care; they do not know how to manage and they do not care. All they are interested in is greed and profit. The Minister has been consulting with the community and has set up committees.

Mr Fraser: Inept Labor administration.

Mr MARKHAM: The honourable member for Coffs Harbour has no brains.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member for Keira will address his remarks through the Chair and will disregard the interjections.

Mr MARKHAM: The member for Monaro should not criticise this Government in regard to river management. What did the former coalition Government do about the Snowy River? It did nothing. The honourable member for Coffs Harbour has no brains, so how would he be able to interject? I do not think he has been on the other side of the Great Dividing Range to see what is going on, unlike the Minister for Land and Water Conservation who has put in place programs to make sure that in years to come the river systems will be closer to what they were 209 years ago.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member for Monaro has not spoken in the debate, but will have an opportunity to contribute to the debate, as I will give him the next call.

Mr MARKHAM: The water quality and environmental flow issues are further examples of the Government's commitment to proper consultation with the community. Shortly the Government will release a major report on water quality and river flow objectives for rivers across the State which will be available for community comment. That is more than the Opposition would do. This will be a critical issue for water users and the ongoing health of our rivers, and can be settled only after solid community debate. I do not pretend that consultation can overcome all the differences of opinion in relation to water resources management.
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However, the consultation process provides opportunities for the Government to seek community feedback, communicate the reasons for the reforms, talk about the facts of key decisions and gives stakeholders the chance to gain a better understanding of each other's position. It is in fact a sign of good management.

Honourable members opposite would not know how to go about it. What a waste of the time of this House. There are so many issues in this State that need to be addressed and the Opposition has introduced a censure motion against one of the most progressive Ministers to have had responsibility for land and water conservation issues in this State. He knows more about the issues than any member opposite, so far as I am concerned, and he has more interest in what is going on. [Time expired.]

Mr COCHRAN (Monaro) [9.46 p.m.]: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. In the last few days I have travelled along the Darling River from Menindee to Wilcannia and through to Brewarrina. I met and spoke with many of the irrigators along the way. In consultation with the shadow minister for land and water conservation, I conveyed to them the fact that the Minister for Land and Water Conservation has absolutely no idea, no concept whatsoever, of water management in this State. I also struck one of the most extraordinary suggestions I have heard in my nine years as a member of Parliament. When the Minister for Land and Water Conservation was at Wilcannia, the local government authority - the Central Darling Shire Council - complained about the water supply. The Minister suggested that they pump the water from Menindee to Wilcannia, back against the flow of the river. I am surprised. If that was the advice of the Minister, I do not think he knows which way the river flows.

In response to an interjection by the honourable member for Keira, Opposition members know why the Snowy River has no water. If the honourable member goes to Hansard in 1989 he will see that as the member for Monaro at that time I raised the issue of the Snowy River and the fact that there was no water in it. We knew that there were depleted flows in the Darling River. We knew that the only way to supplement the water going across the South Australian border was by means of a diversion of the Snowy in the upper region of the Murrumbidgee River through the Murray to make up for the lack of water in the Murray. We well knew what was going on and we raised that issue in 1989.

Since then I have depended on the Minister for Land and Water Conservation to do something, through the Federal Government, both Labor and the current Government, to reinstate the water flow in the Snowy River. It is up to the Minister to do something about it. I appreciate the opportunity you have given me, Mr Speaker, which is an ex gratia gift of time. I am fully aware of what you did and I appreciate it because this is an important issue and one which the Minister will appreciate when he is out of government in 1999.

Mr YEADON (Granville - Minister for Land and Water Conservation) [9.51 p.m.], in response: This just goes to show that in two years the Opposition has learnt absolutely nothing.

Mr Cochran: We are going to send this to Laws.

Mr YEADON: Please do. New South Wales has reached a situation where the use of water has been taken to its absolute maximum. It is essential now to implement a system to ensure the sustainable use of water which, in turn, will ensure sustainable primary production in this State. To take a broad picture, historically water use in this State has gone through three stages and has now reached the fourth stage. The first stage was the discovery of our land, which includes our water systems. The second stage was the use of those rivers, primarily in inland New South Wales. The third stage moved to the regulation of a significant number of the State's major rivers.

We have now reached the fourth stage where the use of the water resource in this State has been taken to its maximum capacity and, indeed, in some valleys beyond that. It is essential now to put in place a management regime that will ensure two things. Firstly, it must ensure that our primary production is based upon the sustainable use of our natural water resource and, secondly, it must ensure that mechanisms are in place to enable the entry of new players. The situation that we confront at the present time is that as a result of the maximisation of that water use there are major problems in many valleys across the State. New players cannot come in and find water which they require to undertake their productive systems.

The Cudgegong Valley is a prime example of that situation. We need to ensure that this State has an environment in which new production can be undertaken - not just cropping and agriculture but grazing, which by and large already is carried on across New South Wales, new agriculture and horticultural initiatives, grapes and olives being key initiatives - and beyond that make provision for primary production such as mining. Another example is the Cadia Mine near Orange. The proponents of that operation had to purchase half a dozen parcels of property to transfer the water entitlement to their mining operation. Cadia Mine purchased half a dozen parcels of land for which it
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has no use other than to obtain the properties' water entitlements. It is now saddled with those half a dozen parcels of land for which it has no use and no-one else is able to access them. The land could be used by other producers for grazing or a range of other activities. That is an untenable situation.

This State needs an environment in which new players can come into the game. The only way that will occur is, firstly, by ensuring that the fundamentals are in place to provide for sustainable river management and, in addition, access rights are available for irrigators and extractors so that they have the ability to trade in that commodity, the natural resource of water. A reform process is needed that will rationalise the environment, ensure that the fundamentals for river health are in place and build upon that very solid foundation. The only way that can be achieved is by having a very solid foundation. It will then be possible to ensure that people have proper and appropriate access rights for extraction. That is what this Government is about.

That policy is in the interests of the constituents that those opposite purport to represent, but they have not learnt anything in the last decade. They have not learnt a damned thing about what is required to ensure a sustainable, manageable environment for the use of our most important and scarce natural resource - water. To go to the specifics raised by those members opposite who have spoken in this debate, the present Murray-Darling Basin ministerial cap on extractions is just that: it is a cap, not a cut. In fact, this has been a record year for irrigators. As one example, cotton and rice growers are starting to reap the benefits of a bumper harvest. Those industries anticipate yields in New South Wales of $904 million and $280 million respectively. Those are April 1997 figures. Most regulated valleys in the State had the benefit of 100 per cent allocations of water this year. I defy any member opposite to dispute that.

Mr Cruickshank: You were told.

Mr YEADON: The honourable member for Murrumbidgee, who is interjecting again, as is his wont, went on about the centralist approach of this Government. Contrary to what members opposite are bandying about, I am pleased to inform the House that the Government has conducted comprehensive consultation with water users, namely, irrigation representatives, and this commitment is and will be ongoing.

Mr Cruickshank: That is nonsense.

Mr YEADON: Members opposite have made this accusation about a whole range of areas. Another issue that springs to mind immediately is native vegetation management in this State. The allegation was made that the Government was not consulting and had a centralist approach.

Mr Cruickshank: Absolutely; you do.

Mr YEADON: That is not the case. The Government introduced State environmental planning policy 46 as an interim measure. It has now conducted a comprehensive consultation process and is moving forward into a permanent framework for native vegetation management that is based on consultation and on a regional approach. It does not take a blanket approach to New South Wales but is based on regions to take account of the unique and specific situation that applies in each geographic area. The same approach will be taken in regard to water. The Government will deal with water reform in a valley-by-valley approach, look at the circumstances of a particular valley, determine what is required in that valley to ensure sustainable agriculture and sustainable primary production, in consultation with the people in the valley, and move forward to implement a scheme that will ensure future sustainability. The Government will do the same with water as it did with native vegetation.

The rules for cap implementation were negotiated and agreed upon for all of the State's regulated rivers, including the Murray and the border rivers - the Murrumbidgee, the Lachlan, the Namoi, the Gwydir and the Macquarie valleys. While I believe that the majority of New South Wales producers agree with the cap principles, concern has been expressed that any water not used in New South Wales and saved as a result of the cap implementation should not go towards feathering the nests of farmers in Victoria and South Australia, and I could not agree more. This State will not enter into a reform process that will result in the benefits of our work being transferred to other States so that they can extract more water from the rivers in those States. How can members opposite ignore the severe problems in the rice-growing districts? I refer to the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, 17 per cent of which has been degraded. Four per cent of the Coleambally Irrigation Area has been degraded. About one-third of those areas are no longer arable. [Time expired.]

Mr D. L. PAGE (Ballina) [10.01 p.m.], in reply: I sincerely thank the honourable member for Murray, the honourable member for Murrumbidgee, and the honourable member for Monaro, for supporting my motion albeit unexpectedly. The best I can say about members of the Government who
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spoke in the debate is that they delivered largely hollow rhetoric, as did the Minister. He seems to think that he can explain away all his policy decisions on the basis that he is the only Minister who has ever considered sustainable management of resources. Everyone who has ever thought about these issues understands the importance of sustainability. Everyone in the agricultural sector understands that to have long-term sustainability of agriculture you must have long-term sustainability of the environment. It is quite insulting of the Minister to come into this place and say that everyone involved in the past, until he got here, had no understanding of what was going on and made a lot of decisions that were anti the environment. The blue-green algae outbreak was an environmental disaster, but it occurred when the State was suffering from one of the worst droughts in our history. The Minister should not use that as a lever to justify his policies, which by his own admission and actions in the past two or three weeks were wrong.

Mr Yeadon: We have always had droughts, but we have never had blue-green algae like that.

Mr D. L. PAGE: What you have done in regard to Cudgegong is an admission of the very point the Opposition is trying to get across: the Minister's policy and his interpretation of the Murray-Darling Basin cap has been totally inflexible. In December last year, while the Victorians were taking 200 per cent of their allocation, you restricted our allocation to 100 per cent.

Mr Yeadon: Does that make it right, Don? No.

Mr D. L. PAGE: What it means is that there was a surplus of water at the time, but because of your inflexible approach Victorians had access to water, and therefore investment and income, while our people on the other side of the same river did not have access. You have been totally inflexible in the way you have approached it.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister will remain silent. The honourable member for Ballina will address his remarks through the Chair.

Mr D. L. PAGE: The fact that in the past couple of weeks the Minister has conceded that surplus water in Cudgegong can be used for horticultural pursuits is the first indication we have had from him in two years that his approach hitherto has been inflexible and wrong. I welcome the decision, but the Opposition sought it ages ago. The overriding point I make is that the terms of the motion are about managing our water system not only in a sustainable way, but in a flexible way that will provide for a proper balance of both the environment and industry. I am concerned that this Minister seems to have been captured by the idea that the Murray-Darling Basin cap has to be, and a lot of people in the environmental movement believe it should be, permanently stuck at the 1993-94 levels of development. If the Minister is contemplating going down that route, I would urge upon him that it is an unsustainable policy in the long run because one has to have flexibility to cope with change.

I note that the Minister referred in his contribution to the need for flexibility, but he forgot to tell us that he has placed an embargo on licences. He cannot have a flexible policy if he has an embargo on licences. People on the north coast in my electorate are seeking water licences to develop new horticultural industries that have a lot of potential, such as coffee growing and other industries. Some people who have licences are not using water, yet the Minister has placed an embargo on new licences, so no-one can get a new licence. The Minister has to produce a more flexible policy than the policy he has had in the past, which is the essence of the motion. Whilst he is not taking a flexible approach, other governments involved in the Murray-Darling Basin system, in particular, are taking a more flexible approach and New South Wales is losing jobs and investment to other States. There is plenty of evidence to suggest this is the case, and I went through some of it in my earlier remarks.

I place on record that I believe environmental flow is a very important issue and that it must be addressed. Whilst there needs to be a much better basis for protecting environmental flows, one needs to understand the facts. We must ensure that we do not move to unilaterally declare, on an ad hoc basis, arbitrary measures to satisfy ill-defined and unsubstantiated environmental requirements. We are still awaiting the report of the Minister on the state of our rivers. Hopefully we will have it within the next couple of months. The Minister has implemented a whole range of decisions on environmental flow but we do not have the fundamental document that tells us the state of our rivers.

Mr Yeadon: What about the report on the national state of the environment endorsed by your colleague Senator Hill, which states that -

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Mr D. L. PAGE: The Minister knows exactly the report I am talking about. I am not talking about that report. A much more sophisticated report has been commissioned, and he knows only too well what I am talking about. It should have been ready and available to the public and the Government in June last year, yet it has not been available. It is obviously taking a lot longer to bring to fruition than was initially thought. That is understandable, because it is a complex issue. But the Minister is making decisions without having full regard to the facts.

One person who is very knowledgable in the area of water policies, the only person in the Southern Hemisphere who is on the World Water Council, is Professor John Pigram. He used to be a Labor man, but he has completely turned away from the Labor Party because of its approach to water, which he has described as very inflexible because of the way in which the Minister has approached the problems. What he said to me about the Minister is unprintable. The Minister talked about being welcomed with open arms by everyone in the irrigation areas. When I visit the irrigation areas people tell me what a terrible bloke the Minister is because he will not listen to them and because he is wet behind the ears. In fact, his own Australian Labor Party people got him in the back room and told him that he was wet behind the ears and that he did not know what he was doing. They hit him around the face a bit, sent him back out and smacked him on the bottom.

The Minister is laughing, yet it is true. That is exactly what happened. The Minister upset his own people, not to mention those who oppose him. The honourable member for Murrumbidgee referred to State-owned corporations. We are now returning to the bad old days: everything will be controlled from Macquarie Street. The Minister claimed that the coalition did nothing when it was in government. But it took the enterprising step of privatising Murray Irrigation, which is now the biggest privately-owned irrigation company in the world. Who developed the land and water management plans?

Mr Yeadon: The local community.

Mr D. L. PAGE: Exactly, the local community, with assistance from government. One thing the Minister has possibly not thought about in relation to the land and water management plans is the SOC arrangement. If the Minister continues to run these irrigation areas and the plans can be overturned by decisions made in Macquarie Street, it will be difficult for those in the local community who have devised plans, perhaps over four or five years, to commit themselves to their implementation.

Brett Tucker, the Executive Officer of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area Council for Horticulturalists, is one of the smartest people in the industry. He told a local newspaper that it would be utterly ridiculous for authorities in Sydney to implement a management plan that locals have spent five years developing. In fact, a resolution of the annual general meeting of the horticultural council stated that it is highly likely the land and water management plan will be discarded by the community if an appointed board is responsible for implementing a plan that has been generated by the community. The Minister has made token representations to the locals, but everyone knows that everything will continue to be controlled by Macquarie Street. Environmental problems in our rivers are not new. The honourable member for Keira referred earlier to problems relating to the Murray and Darling rivers. In fact, some rivers did not even run in the old days. [Time expired.]

Question - That the motion be agreed to - put.

The House divided.

Mr Armstrong Mr O'Doherty
Mr Beck Mr D. L. Page
Mr Blackmore Mr Phillips
Mr Brogden Mr Photios
Mr Chappell Mr Richardson
Mrs Chikarovski Mr Rixon
Mr Cochran Mr Rozzoli
Mr Cruickshank Mr Schipp
Mr Debnam Mr Schultz
Mr Downy Ms Seaton
Mr Ellis Mrs Skinner
Ms Ficarra Mr Slack-Smith
Mr Fraser Mr Small
Mr Glachan Mr Smith
Mr Hartcher Mr Souris
Mr Hazzard Mr Tink
Mr Humpherson Mr J. H. Turner
Dr Kernohan Mr R. W. Turner
Mr Kinross Mr Windsor
Mr MacCarthy Tellers,
Mr Merton Mr Jeffery
Mr Oakeshott Mr Kerr

Page 7255

Ms Allan Mr Martin
Mr Amery Ms Meagher
Mr Anderson Mr Mills
Ms Andrews Ms Moore
Mr Aquilina Mr Moss
Mrs Beamer Mr Nagle
Mr Crittenden Mr Neilly
Mr Debus Ms Nori
Mr Face Mr E. T. Page
Mr Gaudry Mr Price
Mr Gibson Dr Refshauge
Mrs Grusovin Mr Rogan
Ms Hall Mr Rumble
Mr Harrison Mr Scully
Ms Harrison Mr Shedden
Mr Hunter Mr Stewart
Mr Iemma Mr Sullivan
Mr Knight Mr Tripodi
Mr Knowles Mr Watkins
Mr Langton Mr Whelan
Mrs Lo Po' Mr Woods
Mr Lynch Mr Yeadon
Dr Macdonald
Mr McBride Tellers,
Mr McManus Mr Beckroge
Mr Markham Mr Thompson
Mr Collins Mr Carr
Mr Peacocke Mr Clough

Question so resolved in the negative.

Motion negatived.