Thursday, 14 November 2019

In reply to  Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (12 November 2019)

Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education):

The premise of this question is wrong. The Minister did not ban trades from the Goulburn into the Murray.

In August the Minister for Water announced that all inter-valley trade would be brought under the same rules in December.

This will mean all trades—including tagged trade—would come under the 200 GL limit on trades from the Goulburn to the Murray.

In the lead up to that, the Minister for Water noted concerns about the use of tagged trade accounts.

Until recently Lower Murray Water customers with tagged trade accounts were not permitted to use the accounts once the 200 GL limit was reached.

This was inconsistent with Goulburn-Murray Water customers who could use tagged trade even when the limit was reached.

Below the limit, Lower Murray Water customers with tagged accounts could still do intervalley trades without being out of pocket for extra water. They did this using an alternate form of intervalley trade that had the same effect.

The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning is working with Goulburn-Murray Water and Lower Murray Water to ensure consistency across trade.

This will be further formalised in December when all trades—tagged or otherwise need to come under the 200 GL intervalley limit.

We are on track to meet our obligations under the Basin Plan without further water coming from the consumptive pool. With our environmental offset projects submitted and funded, we’re on track to reach our water recovery obligation of 1075 GL. Beyond the 1075 GL there will be no further water recovery projects as part of the additional 450 GL, unless it can be proven they have positive socio-economic outcomes for communities.

The Minister for Water has stood up to her state and Federal counterparts from all sides of politics to give Victorian communities confidence that we will get the best possible Basin Plan outcomes for them.

For constraints, that meant withdrawing the Goulburn Constraints Project from the supply measures package for the SDL adjustment to avoid flooding private land and establishing a panel at Ministerial Council to further examine issues with constraints.

We have secured funding for our environmental offsets projects. That means investment in regional communities, good environmental outcomes and no more water coming from the consumptive pool.

We do not support further buybacks in Victoria.

We have been clear that there are substantial issues in the northern Basin that need addressing, including protection of environmental flows, floodplain harvesting and compliance. As well as the lack of transparency in the north, we need to respond to those issues, and we will continue to push for that.

Victoria has led the deliverability review and further work on deliverability through the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council. We are concerned about the capacity of the system to cope with increasingly high flows.

As well as looking at inter-valley trade rules we have moved to limit any new extraction in the Lower Murray to ensure deliverability for existing irrigators.

The Minister for Water has raised these issues with New South Wales and South Australia and will continue asking them to introduce a similar measure.

We will ensure all inter-valley trades are treated the same and occur under the 200 GL trade limit. This will help protect the environmental health of the river and deliverability for irrigators.

We want to provide confidence in the community that the market is working for irrigators and is not being distorted. We don’t want to see any distortions or inconsistencies, and that’s why we are reviewing the system to ensure greater transparency.

We are leading the way in Victoria with a review of water market transparency, including extensive community engagement. We have also improved the information available to irrigators about the market and deliverability. It is a significant aspect of transparency, and we are publishing more information on how water markets are working, and how water is used, to directly respond to the community’s concerns.