Grievance Debate - Murray-Darling Basin

Mr PYNE (Sturt) (4.56 p.m.)—Today I want to grieve about the state of the Murray-Darling Basin and perhaps come up with a suggestion which the Commonwealth government might like to take up with a view to improving the regulation of the Murray-Darling Basin—namely, that a referendum be held to remove the power over the Murray-Darling Basin from the states and give it to the Commonwealth government.

This is not a new issue; it is goes right back to the Federation debates in the 1890s where South Australia and other states came very close to giving power over the Murray-Darling Basin to the Commonwealth government but were defeated in their efforts by the Premier of New South. 100 years later the evidence is overwhelming that it is pointless leaving the Murray-Darling Basin in the hands of the states when they have proved themselves incapable of managing such an important resource for Australia.

Today, the economic and ecological importance of the Murray-Darling Basin is undisputed, yet it remains in the hands of the states, who bicker about it and fail to achieve consensus about how it should be approached. As a consequence, the Murray River is slowly dying and the people of Adelaide and all along the Murray who rely on it for water are the sufferers.

I would propose that the power should be a concurrent power so that the states would be entitled to continue to legislate with respect to the Murray-Darling Basin but that any laws that they introduced that were at odds with the Commonwealth power would be invalid and the Commonwealth power would override whatever state law was in place to govern a particular aspect of the management of the Murray-Darling Basin system. There is ample evidence to show that there are good reasons for the people to vote in a referendum to give the Commonwealth power over the Murray-Darling Basin. These include the major environmental issues that need to be addressed: in-stream and dryland salinity, over-allocation of water to consumption, land clearance, soil structure decline and water and wind erosion.

So I am asking that the Commonwealth proceed with a referendum at the next federal election to delete section 100 from the Constitution and replace it with a head of power under section 51 that would give the Commonwealth power over the Murray-Darling Basin.