Plug the pipe and make with the flow of water information

I used to mock people who talked about turning the rivers inland or piping water from the tropics to the southern states, but when I see the Brumby government's approach to water management and the fact that its members are serious, I am left without words.

The Greens have a strong view, obviously, against the pipeline.

That is based on the fact that there are plenty of opportunities left to conserve water and to reduce water consumption within Melbourne's own system. There are large amounts of water coming off our roofs and off our hard surfaces that are not anywhere near being captured -- and that is even before we start getting into the vexed question of recycling sewage.

So far the debate has produced more heat than light and certainly more decibels in the last few minutes. That is really the government's responsibility because this is their project. They need to put more light on the proposal and say what the true benefits are, who is paying, what will be delivered and what guarantees there are around that.

Recently I was present when the Minister for Water in the other place was asked about the economics of the north-south pipeline. He told us what the capital cost was and the volume of water that would be going through the pipe.

Although he was repeatedly pressed about the actual business case or at least the cost that that water would be delivered to us for, he just repeated those two figures over and over again. That is unsatisfactory because it is actually not that hard. To know the delivered cost of water in real terms, all we really need to know is the capital cost, the volume of water, the effective life of the project, whatever terminal value they are going to put on it and the operating costs. The operating costs are, of course, a considerable concern because the project involves pumping large amounts of water for a long time to come. There was no response on the business case. Here, in the middle of this debate, interestingly coincidentally, the government has just rushed in with a pile of papers that relate to a previous request of the Council to provide a little more transparency around some of its water decisions. Obviously I have not had time to examine those documents just yet, as they are being photocopied by the papers office as we speak. I certainly hope some answers are in those documents.

Members know that Melbourne as a city is a relatively small user of water compared with the irrigation system. If you exclude the irrigation system, the urban water use in Australia is actually quite small. If you look at Melbourne's particular uses relative to its own immediate catchment, it is starting to put some considerable demands on those rivers.

At the moment I am paying about $1 a kilolitre for water -- that is what my last water bill indicated. That is about $1000 a megalitre. While these sorts of water rights cannot be directly compared to other rights out there for farm water, there are not too many people, certainly not in the Goulburn Valley, who can snap up water for $1000 a megalitre permanently, with 100 per cent certainty. Remember that the water I am getting is 100 per cent certain: I do not get 20 per cent of my water right in a dry year, I always get the megalitres I request. The water is delivered to me in my house through quite an expensive system -- more expensive than the usual method of channels and so forth -- and it is a perpetual water right.

Ms Lovell -- And it's potable.

Mr BARBER -- And it's potable, as Ms Lovell points out. There are considerable costs there, yet I am paying a lot less for water than others pay.

Now we are going to link up the agricultural system to the urban system, but the cost at my end will not reflect the true cost -- or maybe the cost at the rural end is not reflecting the true cost. Nevertheless, if you sat in Melbourne and looked at your different water options, you would be surprised to find there were so many options available for $1000 a megalitre. If the government is saying that it is selling me water at $1000 a megalitre because it can supply water at $1000 a megalitre -- if marginal revenue is in fact being matched up with marginal cost -- that is interesting, because what I hear about desalination, what I guess about the north-south pipeline and what I am finding in relation to the other projects is that they will end up supplying water that will be a lot more expensive than that.

If the next option at the margin for producing water for Melbourne is more expensive, then those price signals should be coming back down the line to an ordinary user like me.

It would also help if the government made a clear decision about what it wants to do about water restrictions. They come on and they go off, they move up and they move down, and that does not tell me or other investors whether we should be investing in our own water-saving options. It does not tell me, for example, whether I should be buying more water tanks and capturing more water from my roof and so on, and nor would it tell anybody else out there -- with the capacity and capital to invest in water saving -- any new development, any large factory or any municipal council. No wonder the whole thing is so stuffed up.

Melbourne Water runs on a user-pays system under the framework of the national competition policy.

I know that because the Premier, as the then Treasurer, told me exactly that in an estimates committee hearing last year. That is the framework under which water authorities are meant to be managed. The burden of proof is really on the government to provide us with the information we need to make the sorts of comparisons that are essential for this to be a rational, reasoned debate.

In relation to this project, the food bowl modernisation, there is also the question of environmental flows. Allegedly the savings to the environment are guaranteed, but if this project has received only qualified or tacit support from certain environmental groups, I would say that is because the government has been less than clear about how it is going to guarantee the environment's share of the purported savings from this project. If the savings themselves are under question and no such security is being offered for environmental water, then as always the environment is going to end up at the very back of the queue, behind urban users and farmers. That is of real concern to the Greens.

We are talking about a heritage river. We are talking about a river that flows out of that small area, the high country -- perhaps 15 per cent of the Murray-Darling Basin -- and is responsible for the vast majority of the water production. That is the reason we are tapping into the Goulburn River. There is a lot of water in the Goulburn. There is a lot of water in it because it rises out of mountain forests. Yet we are continuing to log those mountain forests and reduce their water yield.

I have read the published food bowl modernisation proposal, and the issue I am really concerned about is that it is extremely lacking in detail. In particular there is a lack of certainty about the environmental flows that have been promised and put forward as a benefit.

We now have the opportunity to examine some documents that the upper house has requested.

Notable among the documents that have been refused, as indicated by the letter just tabled by the Clerk, is the PricewaterhouseCoopers Desalination Procurement Options Analysis of August last year. Given that pipelines, desalination, water conservation, water tanks, recycled sewage and stormwater capture are all options that should be given the opportunity to compete with each other on a level playing field, it is less than satisfactory that the government is hiding its case.

During the last sitting week I described the government in this place in its political journey as being like a bunch of scared people in a castle pouring boiling oil over anybody who comes near the drawbridge. Last week we saw exactly that. We saw a peaceful protest on the steps of Parliament House and the government venting its political bile all over those individuals. Despite that, government members are now walking in here and making claims of so-called executive privilege in relation to the information everybody is trying to debate.

If this is such a great project, the government will be keen to spread the good news and release the documents that relate to the business case and answer these important questions. If the government is not going to be open and transparent about that, then it can expect to be stuck in a debate that continues to generate an increasing amount of heat. For that reason, the Greens will support the motion.
 

See the full debate on Hansard.