Speech to The Daily Telegraph Bush Summit

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Thank you for having me here in Griffith, in the beautiful heart of Wiradjuri country, just north of the Murrumbidgee River.

I pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land, and acknowledge their ongoing connection to this special place.  

In the Wiradjuri language, Murrumbidgee means ‘big water’.

I know that, in leaner years, the river hasn’t always lived up to its name. 
  
But this year it has – and while La Nina comes with its own challenges, I recognise the relief you feel when dams are full, water prices are low, and the river is enjoying its healthiest flow in half a decade. 

Can I also acknowledge the other guests on this panel:

• Kevin Anderson, the NSW Minister for Lands and Water 
• Warren Brown, from the Daily Telegraph 
• Laurie Arthur, the Chairman of SunRice 
• And Vito Mancini, the Chair of the Griffith District Citrus Growers Association 

Since I started in the water portfolio, I’ve been to parts of the Southern Basin, and just last week I was up in the North – in Dubbo and St George and Wilcannia. 

I know that conversations involving water can get passionate around here. 

And I realise that some people, perhaps people in this room, feel that Australians in the city and the country don’t understand each other … that we’re sharing a continent, but speaking different languages.  

That’s why we need forums like the Bush Summit. 

And that's why, as Water Minister, I wanted to be here in Griffith, and have a conversation with you about my thinking – and the Government’s thinking – on water. 

Because towns in this region were built on the promise of irrigation. 

In the case of Griffith, that was literally true. 

This town was designed by government planners, with the help of Walter Burley Griffin, the architect of Canberra, to populate the new Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area after World War One. 

Water engineering made this place. 

It was the first and most essential ingredient in a century of local produce – produce that helped feed a growing nation.   

This district grows oranges, rice, wheat, cotton, apples, grapes, stone fruit, nuts of all kind …

… And if my teenage son was giving this speech, he would point out that you also grow every pickle in every single McDonalds cheeseburger in Australia.  

I want to make this clear: irrigation has been a great thing for this country. 

No one wants to turn that around – any more than we would want to stop the Murrumbidgee in its tracks at Wagga Wagga and send it back east. 

But as Minister for Water, I have responsibility for the entire Basin system, now and into the future.
 
And I have a responsibility to be honest about the challenges we face.

It’s my job to prepare us for the next dry stretch – when the rain stops falling and the rivers start shrinking and water again becomes our most precious resource.   

When our eyes turn again to the sky, hoping for a glimpse of the clouds that bring rain.

Henry Lawson called drought in Australia the ‘red marauder’. 

He lived through one of our worst, the Federation drought, which lasted eight awful years and killed half of Australia’s sheep stock. 

History tells us that, as long as we live on this continent, dry years will follow wet. 

And science tells us that those dry spells are getting longer, hotter, and even less forgiving to human settlement. 

We must all prepare for the challenges that climate change will bring … and the challenges climate change is already bringing. 

That’s why our Government has made such strong commitments on water. 

At the election, Labor promised to deliver the full Murray Darling Basin Plan, including the additional 450 gigalitres of environmental water. 

I know some people in this room oppose that promise. 

I don’t expect you to agree with us – but I do ask you to understand our position. 

The Murray Darling Basin Plan wasn’t written to help us in the good years. 

It was written during and after the Millennium Drought. 

When inflows to the Murray Darling fell to their lowest level on record. 

When Adelaide’s water supply was seriously threatened, and the mouth of the Murray closed before it reached the sea. 

When salinity rose dangerously, and water became acidified. 

And when communities across the Basin were battered and shellshocked – a trauma from which some people never recovered. 

Most river towns can show you a photo from their lowest point, when they played cricket on an empty riverbed.

John Howard was Prime Minister at the time, and he acknowledged that ‘our current trajectory of water use and management [was] not sustainable’. 

And that: ‘in a protracted drought, and with prospect of long term climate change, we need radical and permanent change’. 

That’s why we designed the Murray Darling Basin Plan. 

To build a permanent change into our system of water use; before a permanent change was imposed on us.

Inevitably, that meant taking less water from the river; and using the water we took more efficiently. 

Many of you are leaders in using water more efficiently. 

Farmers are often our best environmentalists – and I want to hear your stories and learn from them. 

In the decade since we signed the plan, we’ve made real progress down this road, and that’s something we should celebrate. 

Thankfully, we haven't lived through anything as prolonged and savage as the Millennium drought, but we’ve navigated some very tough years. 

In 2019, water recovery helped save rivers in the northern basin, when they were in a terrible state. 

And at the bottom of the system, at the mouth of the Murray, it helped keep the river connected to the sea for eight of the past ten years – flushing salt and toxins into the Southern Ocean.

It took sacrifice to get this point – and I want to recognise the difficult adjustments people in towns like this had to make. 

But water management is only going to get harder in this country.
 
Rainfall patterns are changing. Temperatures are changing.

Climate change means that, on average, we’ll get more rain in northern Australia and less rain in the south-east. 

Which means that basin river flows could decline by as much as 30% by 2050.

I know it’s a difficult future to contemplate, especially in the middle of a wet season, but we have a duty to face it openly. 

That’s why we’re committed to the full plan, including the additional 450 gigalitres.

We're determined to deliver the water, but we're not going to be zealots about how we get there. 

I don’t share any of the taboos held by the last government around water recovery. And I don’t believe in wrapping the plan up in brown tape. 

We’ll be creative. We’ll be consultative. But we won’t block projects for political or ideological reasons.
 
And today, I’m announcing a new water efficiency project, the third I’ve contracted since becoming Minister, at the Nap Nap station, west of Hay. 

I know this one is close to Minister Kevin Anderson’s heart – and I thank him for bringing it to the Commonwealth’s attention.

By improving water infrastructure, the project at Nap Nap station will:

• Save 300 megalitres of water a year. 
• About half of which will be recycled back for on farm use.
• It will increase access for firefighters in the region. 
• And it will support local wildlife, by expanding water access on the property. 

As I said, I am open to different approaches to water recovery – and I want to work with all my state and territory colleagues to realise these opportunities. 

Because in the end, we all share a powerful stake in the future of this river system – whether we’re upstream, downstream, in the city or the country. 

Water policy is never easy in Australia. 

As Mark Twain said: whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over. 

But if we keep hold of this basic truth – that we all want a healthy, flowing Murray Darling – then I’m confident we can find common ground and support the river system together.

Thank you.