Mr IAN COHEN [9.27 p.m.]: Recently I had the pleasure of meeting with Steven Ross, coordinator for the Murray Lower Darling River Indigenous Nations [MLDRIN], an independent indigenous organisation representing 10 autonomous indigenous nations living within the Murray-Darling Basin. During our meeting we discussed the importance of cultural water provisions finding a voice in our State and Commonwealth water laws. Cultural flow rights are fundamental rights for the provision of sustainable lifestyles by indigenous communities. Access to cultural water for traditional owners enhances self-determination, enabling nations to implement their own natural resource management regimes. Cultural flows are defined as:

Water entitlements that are legally and beneficially owned by the Indigenous Nations of a sufficient and adequate quantity and quality to improve the spiritual, cultural, environmental, social and economic conditions of those Indigenous Nations.

To this end, article 25 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous People states:

Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.

The Murray Lower Darling River Indigenous Nations states that cultural water can be used for the following purposes: empowerment and social justice—water is delivered to country by its people; growing native plants; protecting and hunting animals; song, dance, art and ceremony; spiritual sites; and improved cultural economic and health outcomes through the provision of food, medicines and materials for art.

Indigenous nations make up 4 per cent of the Murray-Darling Basin, yet they hold title to less than 0.2 per cent of the land area within the basin. In signing the national water initiative all States and Territories have committed to including indigenous representation in water planning; incorporating indigenous social, spiritual and customary objectives and strategies; and taking account of the possible existence of native title rights to water. Living up to this commitment faces considerable roadblocks, as access to cultural water is dependent on positive native title determinations. What is required is a shift away from the stakeholder model to a model of co-management and active legislative reflection in the water-sharing plans of indigenous water rights. In effect, a water-based corollary of land rights must be recognised in legislation—and it is long overdue.

Australia's international obligations under article 8 (j) of the Convention of Biological Diversity require indigenous traditional owners not to be engaged as stakeholders but as co-managers to map out how to energise and implement the provision of cultural water in natural resource management frameworks. Our indigenous communities have an intrinsic and spiritual connection with the Murray-Darling that goes back untold generations before invasion. Forging ahead, we must take steps to understand the connectivity between the cultural and societal capital needs of indigenous nations and align such needs with allocations for cultural water. On this point the report of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies entitled "Indigenous Rights to Water in the Murray-Darling Basin" noted:

In order to enjoy rights such as fishing rights, or more general cultural and economic rights central to the maintenance of Indigenous Nations cultural traditions, it is first critical to have a healthy river system. The degradation of the river system has threatened these pendant rights.

The Indigenous Nations of the Murray have identified the interrelationship between these elements as the need to preserve the cultural economy through the identification of cultural flows. That is, sufficient environmental, social and economic water flows and volumes must be allocated to the river and to Indigenous Nations to sustain the cultural economy of each Nation in the River system.

As the Water Amendment Bill 2008 is considered in the Australian Senate, it is pertinent that the Intergovernmental Agreement on Murray-Darling Basin reform agenda embraces a full and comprehensive consideration of cultural water for indigenous nations. My Greens colleague Senator Rachel Stewart will be moving amendments to this bill to address the delivery of cultural water. I thank the Minister for Water, Philip Costa, and the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Paul Lynch, for meeting with Mr Ross and me to discuss the importance of the cultural water rights of the indigenous nations in the basin. I look forward to a bipartisan dialogue on enhancing the equity and fairness of our water management regime.