Q: What plans does the government have for bulk water entitlements?

Water: northern Victoria irrigation renewal project

 Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My question is to the Minister for Environment and Climate Change and relates to the recently gazetted changes to the bulk entitlement for the Eildon-Goulburn Weir conversion.

In that order certain water shares generated out of the northern Victoria irrigation project will be allocated to the environment, and I presume in the usual fashion that means allocated to the Minister for Environment and Climate Change. Given that many of these savings will come from outfalls and those outfalls are traditionally replenished wetlands, how will the minister ensure that the water is allocated so as to not cause any detriment to the environment?

 Mr JENNINGS (Minister for Environment and Climate Change) -- I thank Mr Barber for his question and his interest in trying to make sure that we use water extremely wisely to protect environmental values while we are trying to get through the myriad of community expectations of how we should use water now and in the future. I appreciate the member's ongoing concern about the well-being of environmental values.

From my vantage point I also appreciate the professional discipline of the officers of the Department of Sustainability and Environment, working in collaboration with the catchment management authorities, and working in conjunction with local community people who are concerned about local environmental values. We do a lot of work through those mechanisms and frameworks in trying to make sure that we identify environmental values that are at risk and require strategic support through the availability of environmental flows, and to try and provide them in a timely and appropriate fashion.

The reason why I outlined that process and that degree of engagement is because it would not be appropriate for us from this distance to make predetermined views of the various pressure points across the Victorian landscape in terms of our waterways and the ways in which local decisions could and should be implemented to protect those local environmental values and the priorities that local communities, catchment management authorities, as I have indicated, and relevant agencies would be determining what values are most acutely in need of environmental flows.

However, there is an overview that comes to the Minister for Water, not me, in terms of trying to make sure that we are mindful how those allocations would and should occur now and in the future.

Obviously in the years to come there will be an even higher relationship between the bodies that are set up under the auspices of the Murray-Darling Basin and how they actually may connect with the availability of water flows, the commitments through the Living Murray, the commitments that the commonwealth government brings to this exercise -- and we welcome its interest and concerns in this field.

So we anticipate that with the combination of the wisdom of some investments we have applied in terms of infrastructure and the availability of water that may be purchased through mechanisms into the future, through Living Murray allocations and through the involvement of the people I have outlined, the cumulative effect of that commitment and that capability will enable us to make wise decisions.

But of course all of us know the acuity of the situation, both in terms of the availability of water and the situation that the environment is confronting, so we cannot be complacent for a second in making those decisions in the years to come.

     Supplementary question

 Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I will ask the minister if he is able to expand on his answer in a particular direction: Minister, I take it from your answer that you have no plan worked out for exactly where the water savings, if they were to amount to 75 gigalitres or any other amount, would go? The reason that is important is that if the water is being withdrawn from certain environmental assets in a way that creates significant impact on matters of national significance and if the plan for allocating this water does not compensate those same assets, the project could be considered to be a controlled action under the federal act. What I am asking you to do is of course not to give a legal opinion on that but to confirm, if that is what your previous answer indicated, that there is currently no plan for how these particular savings will be reallocated back to the environment.

 Mr JENNINGS (Minister for Environment and Climate Change) -- There are probably many people in the chamber right now who are lamenting the quality of the question and the detail of the answer required at this point in time, as we have just clicked over to 1.15 p.m., but it is a good question and it warrants a decent answer.

My substantive answer indicated to Mr Barber that we try to marry up our statutory responsibilities with our engagement with programs such as the Living Murray, which has identified environmental values of national significance that warrant protection and require the availability of environmental flows. That is a starting point for the frame of work I have described. I then talked about ongoing engagement with local communities, the changing nature of the stress that environmental values may be under, and the degree of flexibility that may need to be implemented locally to achieve results there.

As Mr Barber has asked me specifically about whether or not there is a plan, I can say there is an overriding plan that was established under the rubric of the Living Murray, which continues to this day. That continues to be refined and considered in light of the availability of environmental flows, ultimately hopefully culminating in large volumes of water savings -- the 75 gigalitres that Mr Barber mentioned -- in terms of the water that will be available to us through the delivery of our infrastructure investments. We continually cumulatively build on our existing commitments -- the national priorities that are in place, the local priorities that are in place and the timely assessment of how those natural assets are currently travelling in relation to not only their condition but the water that is available to get to them and the way in which we can strategically use that water to maximum those values. We have quite a comprehensive plan and list of natural assets that need to be protected, and we need to have some degree of flexibility in how we continue to protect them over time.