Greens secure clarity on water rights

WATER AMENDMENT (ENTITLEMENTS) BILL
Committee

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I am not proposing to add further to the debate, but I simply make the point for the record and for any government members who are interested that we are open to further discussions about how this particular clause of the bill could be improved to achieve the sorts of objectives that the Greens are interested in.

Many other clauses of the bill which provide for the Minister for Water to exercise his discretion have decision guidelines. In some cases they have reference to very long numbers of considerations that the minister must undertake and require also consultation with other ministers. In this particular provision, the way it is framed and possibly the way it was originally conceived, the bill requires very little homework to be done. It could well be that we could agree to achieve the objective the government is asking for, which is administrative simplicity, but to be very clear that the Greens' interest is in ensuring that all proper considerations are taken before water rights are temporarily qualified. When you look at this clause in its context in the bill, it seems to be extremely light on.

     ...later in the same debate...

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- If this was a murder trial, the defendant would have just broken down on the stand and confessed. Firstly, the government has told us there is absolutely no requirement, except in rare circumstances, to even tell the Victorian public what it is doing when it is doing this, so how would anybody be able to move to the next step? Secondly, the government tells us it has in place a whole bunch of administrative good practices including the way it designs the triggers and the temporary qualifications, that the right information is taken into account and that consultation occurs between various ministers, and yet there is no requirement to do that under the act.

Thirdly, when you think about all that you realise this section of the principal act is actually the all-purpose tool by which a government can temporarily, but on an ongoing basis, get around every other objective of the entire suite of legislation, including all of its high-level objectives and all the other requirements that might exist in other places in the act.

You can literally take away most aspects of this legislation using a temporary qualification.

Lastly, the biggest problem we have here is that the relevant sections of the principal act refer to 'persons affected' and that means only those who use water in a consumptive way. 'Persons affected' in the scheme of this clause and the act are not environmentalists who just care about rivers. They are not fishermen, they are not people who like dabbling their feet in the water, they are not the millions of Melburnians who live along the Yarra River and want to benefit from it or any country people who live along the river and achieve its benefits without drawing water and using it.

I plead with the government to think about withdrawing the bill temporarily and considering how the clause could be rewritten bearing in mind all the goodwill of parties around the table, including the government by the way it has described its current operation of the clause, that could be brought to bear to create what would be a beneficial outcome for the environment, for transparency and for certainty in all the things the minister listed in his last response.

Mr JENNINGS (Minister for Environment and Climate Change) -- I do not take my last contribution as an admission of anything, and I think Mr Barber may be a hanging judge and he may have determined his case before I stood on my feet last time. Having made that point, the government is of the view that it continues to have confidence in this legislation and supports it in its current form. I am happy to be accountable in the way I have described for achieving those policy outcomes and to have a higher degree of community engagement in the future on these matters.

That is where I am today in relation to opposing amendments to the clause.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT -- Order! We will go to the jury. The question is:

That postponed clause 6 stand part of the bill.

Committee divided on postponed clause:

Ayes, 18 
Broad, Ms (Teller)
Pakula, Mr 
Eideh, Mr
Pulford, Ms 
Elasmar, Mr
Scheffer, Mr (Teller) 
Huppert, Ms
Smith, Mr 
Jennings, Mr
Somyurek, Mr 
Leane, Mr
Tee, Mr  
Lenders, Mr
Theophanous, Mr 
Madden, Mr
Tierney, Ms 
Mikakos, Ms
Viney, Mr 

Noes, 20 
Atkinson, Mr
Hartland, Ms (Teller) 
Barber, Mr
Kavanagh, Mr 
Coote, Mrs
Koch, Mr 
Dalla-Riva, Mr
Kronberg, Mrs 
Davis, Mr
D. Lovell, Ms 
Davis, Mr
P. O'Donohue, Mr 
Drum, Mr (Teller)
Pennicuik, Ms 
Finn, Mr Petrovich, Mrs 
Guy, Mr Peulich, Mrs 
Hall, Mr Rich-Phillips, Mr 

This means that Clause 6, which sought to allow the Minister for Water to permanently "temporarily" qualify rights to water allocations, including environmental flows (or water allocated for rivers) in times of water shortage, is now withdrawn from this Bill. 

Click here to read the continued debate in Hansard

Click here to be redirected to Greg's earlier speech on this Bill