Wednesday, 9 March 2022

Water policy

Ms SANDELL (Melbourne) (19:13): (6261) My adjournment tonight is to the Minister for Water, and the action I seek relates to the sustainable water strategy for the Central and Gippsland regions. I ask the minister to include in this strategy a moratorium on new extraction licences and entitlements and a plan to immediately return more water to our rivers. This sustainable water strategy covers a huge area of Victoria, from the Great Dividing Range to the coast, from the Otways to East Gippsland. It includes Melbourne, Geelong and many regional towns. It covers many significant waterways—the Moorabool, Barwon, Latrobe, Thomson and Mitchell rivers and the Gippsland Lakes. Obviously keeping these waterways healthy is important for all of us and our survival, and they are central to the health of country and the culture of Victoria’s First People.

In October last year the government released a discussion draft of the strategy. Over the months since my team and I have been contacted by environmental organisations and local river care groups who are worried. Their concern is that it prioritises water use by agriculture and homes, while the health of rivers is left to rely on future manufactured water being created. So essentially rivers may only get water if we build another desalination plant, something that does not seem likely to happen for many years. Right now all sides of politics seem to think we can just keep giving out water to industry and homes to use with little consequences, but we know that is not the reality with climate change.

That is why we are calling on the government to redraft the strategy and make river health more of a priority. Given the dire state of our rivers and wetlands and the drying climate, I am particularly concerned that the minister has given $500 000 to Southern Rural Water to investigate expanding the Macalister irrigation district. It is a move that would take more water from the already stressed Latrobe and Macalister rivers, and it does not make sense to keep issuing new water licences to agriculture.

We need to do more than just narrowly avoiding catastrophe by barely stopping rivers from running dry. This means setting targets to restore our rivers and wetlands to be thriving ecosystems, and to do this we need to start giving water back to rivers now—and to keep doing it. Existing sleeper licences, currently unused licences, should be returned to rivers. More buybacks need to be on the table. Even though the government keeps saying they are totally opposed to them, we know they can achieve good results at returning water to where it is needed most and should not be taken off the table purely for political reasons. And when the licences for water currently used in the Latrobe Valley’s coalmines are up, we must use this water wisely for the future and especially for our ecosystems.

There is so much more that could and should be said about sustainable water strategy, and I would welcome the opportunity to discuss it with the government further. Without healthy waterways and a healthy environment, none of us will survive. We are dependent on them, yet successive governments’ approaches have been more concerned about giving water to short-term interests at the expense of the long-term sustainability of our agriculture, our environment and our society—and it is coming back to bite us. With the right leadership now and the right strategy, we can ensure our rivers have a future. This is what a good government must do, and I hope the government considers these matters.