The Murray Darling Basin river system has driven prosperity in our beautiful country and it can continue to do so if we can save it from the city bureaucrats and Labor’s ideologically driven policies.
I put forward a motion on the Water Amendment Restoring Our Rivers Bill 2023 because it should not have any further consideration until the Albanese Government properly consults with the States. There was no Murray Darling Basin consultation and that’s the problem with this bill.
The Council of Water Ministers met in August, yet as of this November sitting we have still not seen the communication from that meeting. It seems clear that the states have not collectively signed off on the bill. I urged the Senate to support my motion to send the bill back to the Minister with a clear message to remove the sections the States do not support. Let’s complete the plan, and let’s do it properly for a change.
Transcript
I rise to take note as a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community. It’s no surprise to One Nation that the Senate is once again debating the lack of government transparency—transparency in this case being defined as: what’s the government hiding this time? Consultation from the Labor Party always stops at 39 votes. Everyone else is on a need-to-know basis.
In the case of Senator Davey’s document discovery, the government has decided the Senate does not need to know the basis for government policy in a basin that accounts for $22 billion in food and fibre needed to feed and clothe the world, a basin that’s home to 2.3 million Australians, including those in my home state of Queensland. Apparently, we Queenslanders do not need to know what informed Minister Plibersek’s Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill—a bill on which this document discovery would have cast light. The fundamental failure of the Albanese government when it talks about consultation is its failure to understand that consultation requires disclosure. Already the government has been forced to make three pages of amendments to the bill to make it legally workable. How does anyone get a bill that wrong? Refusing to disclose—that’s how. Refusing to consult—’consult’ does not mean a quick whip around the staff room at the CFMEU or asking the luvvies at the ABC and the Guardian how to run the country. The Albanese voice referendum showed the stupidity of asking the Canberra bubble and inner city socialists what the rest of the country thinks is a fair thing. In real Australia, consulting means listening, sharing and learning.
Senator Pauline Hanson and I have consulted with industry stakeholders and toured the basin, starting in Charleville, in Queensland, all the way to Goolwa, in South Australia. I’ve spoken to independent researchers and even shared a plane for three days with Topher Field as we flew over the basin to understand it and film it. I’ve driven the length of the Murray-Darling Basin three times and my staff another two times, most recently last Christmas. Along the way, I’ve listened to amazing farmers displaying a level of resilience that at times is superhuman. I’ve consulted with Aboriginal people, for whom the water in the river is their life, the centre of their culture and the centre of health and happiness. I’ve spoken with business owners fearful for their future in an agricultural industry this government is determined to replace with fake food made in urban intensive-production facilities. This is an amazing connected river system that has driven prosperity in our beautiful country and can continue to do if only we can save it from Labor’s inner-city ignorance and ideologically driven policy.
Today the Senate will vote on my motion to prevent the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 from being given further consideration until the Albanese government properly consults with the states. The Water Act 2007, upon which the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is based, is very clear. The plan is a consensus document of the four states. The federal government does not get a vote, because it’s a servant to the states, not the master of the states. The ACT does not get a vote as it’s a territory, not a state, and that’s fine since the ACT clearly runs the federal government anyway. Giving the ACT a vote would be, in fact, two votes.
The bill digest contains all the information needed to support my motion. It admits Victoria has refused to sign the new agreement, because Victorian farmers have given up enough water already. Good on the Victorian parliament for standing up for its constituents. Good on New South Wales Premier Chris Minns for being brutally honest in saying the New South Wales government is only signing up to the $700 million in federal buybacks federally for water projects and he is not signing up for water buybacks until after those projects are completed in 2027. The government has no consensus on water buybacks, which are, at best, two all. The rest of the bill contains a lot of good reforms to add accountability, improve measurement and reporting, align spending guidelines and budgets with what is needed and extend the deadline for completion.
The council of water ministers met in August, yet we still have not seen the communication from that meeting. It’s now November. It seems clear that the states have not signed off on the bill in toto. I urge the Senate to support my motion to send the bill back to the minister with a clear message: take out the bits the states do not support, and let’s get the rest of this bill, which is almost all of it, through the Senate this sitting. Let’s complete the plan and let’s do it properly for a change.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/lSvAm9t7Hto/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-11-13 16:05:572023-11-13 16:06:39Labor’s Latest Scheme to Buyback More Farmers’ Water
This budget will jack up power prices, keep inflation roaring to new heights and do nothing to help you from day to day. I joined Sky News the night it was delivered to talk about my initial reaction.
Transcript
Welcome back to our coverage of the budget. Tonight the Treasurer has laid out his economic plan, and while Labour has the numbers in the House of Reps, the Senate cross-bench will be critical for whether the government can pass its various measures. Here’s a reminder of the state of play: 39 votes are needed to pass bills into law. The government has 26, meaning it needs another 13 to get its agenda across the line. The Greens have 12 of those, with another five Senators representing minor parties, and one independent. Joining me live on the desk, is three of those crucial cross-benchers that could make or break the Labour budget. Senator Jacqui Lambie, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, and Greens Treasury spokesman, Nick McKim, great to see you all. Senator Lambie, let’s start with you. What did you think of Jim Chalmers’ first budget?
Oh, I have to say, they’ve played it very safe, haven’t they? It’s really is a mini budget. They’ve got five months up their sleeve, they’re buying time here. They’re gonna have to make some tough decisions by May. We’ve got a massive blowout in the NDIS. We’ve got the cost of living pressures out there, and I think we’ve just, I’ve just seen on the TV in the last five minutes, the gas prices are gonna go up 20% in two years. I tell you what, we are really under the pump in this country, and then we have a major deficit we’ve gotta payoff. That’s where we’re at, some tough decisions. They need to go back to the drawing board. It’s lovely, it’s all been touchy-feely. Let’s see what the May budget looks like, but they’re gonna have to make some cuts, and they’re gonna have to be tough.
Nick McKim, what’s your take on Jim Chalmers’ first effort?
Oh look, there’ll be a lot of disappointed people in the country, I reckon. I mean, this budget’s got more than a width of austerity about it. The government, and the Treasurer, have acknowledged the challenges, and Jacqui talked a little bit about those. I mean, they say they want wages to go up. Wages are gonna go down, then they’re gonna flat-line. They say they want employment to go up, but actually unemployment is going up. They say they want to be fair to people, but actually they’ve got stage-three tax cuts, which give a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks, overwhelmingly benefiting the top end of town. And people who are really struggling to make ends meet, are not getting much assistance at all in this budget.
Malcolm Roberts, is it a budget for the times, as Jim Chalmers argues?
[Malcolm Roberts] It’s a budget for the continuation, and falling off a cliff I think, because workers have already gone backwards 10%. Anybody who earns a wage or salary is going back 10%, and will continue to go back because we’ve got rapid inflation. Wages won’t move anywhere nearly as quickly. We’ve got high cost of living pressures. We’ve got high energy prices. Prices are forecast to go up 50% next year Kieran, and 50% the year after. People can’t handle that. That’s a doubling of prices. 100% increase over two years, that’s a doubling. We’ve got a climate change, there’s very few specifics. The housing, we talk about a million houses.
[Jacqui] Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I can see you nodding your head Jacqui, a million houses, how? Where’s the provision?
Yeah.
[Malcolm Roberts] We can see 20, $25 billion on climate. Well, 20 of it is on poles and wires. It’s just gonna increase the cost of electricity from far-flung areas. We’ve already got the poles and wires we need from coal-fired power stations. This is absurd.
With that rewiring the nation, that project that Malcolm Roberts is alluding to there, it’s $20 billion. A lot of challenges in terms of workforce and supplies in getting that done. Does that mean that power prices rise at least in the short term until that’s all established?
Well, this budget makes it very clear that, retail electricity prices will go up 56% in the next two years. So there is no doubt that we are facing massive pressures on household bills. I wanna talk a little bit about the housing announcement.
[Kieran] There were those numbers there. So you have 20% this year, 30% next year-
[Nick] That’s right, they have compounded.
[Kieran] -for electricity and gas. Yeah, that’s 56. And then the gas 20 and 20.
[Nick] That’s right.
[Kieran] As Jacqui suggested.
[Nick] That’s right.
[Kieran] So, we’re talking a massive hit to-
We are talking massive hits on household budgets, and what the government could have done is walk away from the tax cuts for the top end, and put in place genuine cost of living measures. They could have put dental into Medicare, mental health support into Medicare, done more on childcare, built more affordable homes, wipe student debt. Like there’s plenty the government could do. And the money was there. A quarter of a trillion dollars, $250 billion over 10 years overwhelmingly favouring the top. We’re all gonna get a 9,000; Jacqui, Malcolm, and I will all get a $9,000 a year tax break, and there is nothing in that package for minimum income.
Do you think there should have been direct support on power prices? Because obviously there’s this challenge with the inflationary environment right now, that if they write checks,
Yeah, the challenges.
they could have a counterproductive effect.
The challenges with this country over the years of both major parties have sold us out. We no longer own things. This is the problem. So, we’re relying on other people to generate our power for us, and that cost us a lot more money instead of leaving it in the hands of what we should have been as private investors. That’s where we were at in 2021. And that’s been really unfortunate. I don’t know what you do about those power prices, ’cause quite frankly, we have no control over the companies that run them. They can pretty much run amok all they like, and that’s where we’re at.
Should there be price caps or something of that sort?
Something needs to be done, whether it’s price caps or, I think Daniel Andrews is buying his lot back. Isn’t he in Victoria? He’s worked out, it’s costing them a fortune. He’s got no control over it. He’s buying it off. We have control over ours in Tasmania. We’re very lucky the state government owns ours, and they could give us, they could relieve that pressure as well by giving us cuts. They don’t do that, that is their choice. We pay a little bit less than the rest of you, but I can tell you now, this is where the state government of Tasmania is really gonna feel it, because there’s no way Tasmanians can afford for our power prices to go up 5%, let alone 20.
We’re talking of massive impact. What do you think? Should there be price signal or price cuts?
[Malcolm Roberts] No, definitely not. If you look at childcare, it’s increasingly getting more and more subsidies. The prices go up, whenever you subsidise something, people charge more for it. I mean it’s that simple, this is basic economics. Manufacturing will get really decimated by this. First of all, the cost of electricity is now the number one cost category in any manufacturing, any manufacturing. It used to be labour, labor’s not anymore. It’s electricity. What we’re doing is, we’re subsidising the Chinese to instal these parasitic mal investments. They’re kamikaze investments, solar and wind, to raise the price of electricity, everywhere in the world, where they’ve increased solar and wind, they’ve increased the price of electricity, startlingly. Manufacturing will be driven out of the country yet more.
What’s your read on that? Because obviously in the short term, there are challenges with transmission. The poles and wires that we spoke about, they need to be done to accommodate.
Absolutely.
But Malcolm Robert’s argument there, that it’ll just simply continue to drive prices up, renewables.
Oh no, I mean you could legislate to put in place price caps. I mean there’s a very common thing to do around the world, and I don’t accept Malcolm’s argument there. I mean ultimately…
[Malcolm Roberts] It’s in the figures, empirical figures all around the world. Every country, Spain, Germany, any country that goes heavily into solar and wind, it increases their prices of electricity.
I know Malcolm doesn’t believe in climate change, but the sciences-
[Malcolm Roberts] I believe in climate variability Nick.
absolutely have to to rapidly reduce our emissions in this country. And the best way to provide the cheapest power is more investment in renewables, and less into propping up the dirty, old coal-fired clunkers because they are unreliable. They’re old infrastructure, building new fossil fuel plants, including gas, is more expensive than putting in place distributed generation of renewable energy close to the centres of demand, supported by battery store.
The challenge in the the short term obviously, workforce shortages, supply shortages, these are all bottlenecks,
[Nick] They are.
in terms of that process, aren’t they?
Yeah, absolutely they are. And, now there was some welcome investment in the budget into TAFE and vocational education. I think that’s a good thing, but that does take obviously time to flow through.
Do you see Jacqui Lambie, I think you alluded to it earlier, but with this spending approach, Jim Chalmers says it’s 99% of the additional commodities, and tax revenue has been banked. Is this an attempt to say, “Okay, we’re not doing a Liz Truss budget, we’re gonna be responsible, and this is almost like a stepping stone to the May budget, where those broader changes might eventuate.”
Well, I think if you follow Liz’s Truss’s track, you’re not gonna last very long. That would be my my first point. But look, we’ve been really, really lucky with our commodities in this country. We’ve made a lot of money outta them. We don’t know if we’re gonna do that next year, the year after. We don’t know whether there’s gonna be a call for as much of those resources as around the rest of the world. I wouldn’t think there will be. We’ve had a really great year on that. That’s great. And we’ve all got a little bit GST extra outta that for our states, that’s a fabulous thing. We’ve seen that, I’m sure $360 million extra in Tasmania is gonna help us a lot. We’re only a small state, and that that will go to fixing things. But we cannot rely on this. We really need to look at those stage-three tax cuts. I believe that, those people in those lower incomes, certainly give them a tax cut, give them a bit of a break. It’s gonna be tough for them over the next few years. There’s no doubt about that. But people on the 120, a 100 or 1,000, where’s the cutoff to say, “You know what? We can’t afford to give you a tax cut at this point in time. Something needs to be done.” We can save billions of dollars there. There’s no doubt about that. I have to laugh about their TAFE, when they, they’re gonna chuck a billion dollars back into TAFE, Kieran, which is lovely. I’d remind the Labour Party, they cut $4 billion outta that education fund about three years ago alongside the Labour Party. So good on you for putting it back. Better late than ever. And I’ll be very grateful for that. But right now, we have a deficit and we cannot ignore that. And we have to start paying that back. We also have to pay up there for that NDIS, and something has to give here.
Malcolm Roberts, the Treasurer says that we need to have a conversation, a national conversation, and the tax needs to be part of that conversation. Where should we head in terms of the debate about the structural deficit? Because quite clearly, he’s identified the illness, not necessarily the entire cure this evening.
[Malcolm Roberts] Good question. First of all, we need the end, I’ll get into tax in a minute, but we need to end the black armband view of mining. Mining has pulled this country out of a mess for the last two years. And the coal prices were forecast in last budget are around about $60 a tonne. They’re $400 in actual fact, iron ore similarly, very much higher than they were forecast be. If it wasn’t for mining, we’d be well and truly deeper in the brown stuff. Now, tax, we need to make it simple. We need to make it, so that the multinationals automatically pay their tax. They’re not doing it at the moment. The Liberal Party in 1953 put in the Double Taxation Recognition Act, which basically made large foreign multinationals, not pay company tax, that’s absurd. The petroleum resources tax, that Bob Hawke’s Labour Party brought in the ’80s, made sure that the largest tax evader in the world, Chevron, pays not a cent, while they export billions of dollars worth of our natural gas. And we’re the largest gas, we’re the largest exporters of energy in the world. And we get bugger all for it here. We have the highest gas prices, we have the highest-
So do you think a profits tax, a super profits tax or something like that?
[Malcolm Roberts] I think you get back to basics, and you actually tax multinationals on the widgets they make. That’s an interim one. But we’ve gotta have a simpler tax system, bring it back to basics. We’ve got way outta kilter. It’s far too complex. The GST was supposed to-
New mines, new gas projects and so on. But this remains a lucrative transition fuel, does it not?
We have argued consistently for a corporate super profits tax. We have argued consistently for super profits taxes particularly targeted at fossil fuel companies. And I wanna make this point about taxation. In this budget, it was revealed tonight, that the petroleum resource rent tax is gonna bring in $450 million over the forward estimates, less than what we were told it would last year. We are in the middle of a so-called gas boom, and the big gas companies are gonna be paying $450 million bucks less tax along with the other companies. The petroleum resource rent tax targets less tax than what they were forecast to last year. It’s an absolute roar.
So obviously that’s your,
And it needs to be fixed.
that’s your thinking, in terms of where the Treasurer should start this conversation.
He could do that. He could walk away from the quarter of a trillion dollars, the $250 billion in stage-three tax cuts. That’s what they will cost over the next 10 years. Negative gearing, reform capital gains tax reform, which would stop these spiking house prices, which are pricing too many people out of a home. And meaning that at the moment, homes are like an investment class, rather than a human right. There’s so much we could do, and so many levers at Jim Chalmers’ disposal, and he’s basically pulled none of them.
[Malcolm Roberts] I think we might have found something that Nick, and I agree on, because the government is talking about, housing price is a simple matter of supply and demand, right Kieran?
Is is that a first by the way? I think it might be.
[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah, no, no. Nick and I have helped each other-
I’m worried, I’m worried.
[Malcolm Roberts] on quite a few things. Housing prices are a matter of supply and demand. The supply is up to the local governments, and some extent the state governments. Federal government’s got nothing to do with that. The demand, the federal government’s gonna shoot up by increasing immigration, 180,000 net, permanent.
No, now, just to be clear, we don’t agree on that. And I just wanna say about housing, the headline from the government is a million new homes. When you look at the fine print in the budget, it’s 10,000.
We’ve got two and a half minutes left, before we cross over to Paul Murray and his special tonight. Let’s get some final thoughts, overarching thoughts if we can, Jacqui Lambie to you as we wrap up this evening. What would you like to leave our viewers in terms of your assessment? Obviously, you believe that this is really a stepping-stone budget in many respects, and a lot of work to come over six months.
Yeah, I think it is a stepping-stone budget. They’re just dipping their toe in the water at the moment. They’ve got some big decisions to make over the next six months. And-
And is it largely around the NDIS? Is it your view that that’s the role?
I think it’s around everyone, everything. I am just gonna step forward here, and say that they’re giving the GST to the states, because they’re gonna expect those states to start giving some heavy lifting and they’re gonna say, “Hey, we gave you extra GST. You go fix that.” I reckon that’s exactly what they’re doing. It is not going to be enough. Our people are really hurting out there. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better, especially if we do go, we’re already heading into recession. If we hit a recession, we’ve got interest rates going up out there. Houses are losing their value. We’ve got many young kids that invested in them. We’re in dire straits going in, into the next 12 months, and they’re gonna have to make some really tough decisions for that May budget. And you know what, this is what we’re gonna say, “Is Labour made of the steel that it thinks it is?”
Malcolm Roberts, your final assessment as we wrap up?
[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah, they’ve completely missed the major points, A paper presented, I’ll read these figures. A paper presented to Cabinet, calculated the value difference in exporting bauxite, the ore, versus processed aluminium in ’19, $70. Just imagine what these figures would be today, exporting 1 million tonnes of bauxite, the raw material earned $5 million. Processed one step into alumina, earned $27 million, more than five times as much, processed again into aluminium, earned a $125 million, and processed finally into aluminium products, earned $600 million. If they’re fair thinking about manufacturing, they need to fix electricity prices and get on with the tax reform.
Malcolm thank you, and Nick McKim finally to you as we wrap up.
Yeah, sure. Look, I’ll be brief ’cause I know we’re nearly outta time, but in one word, disappointing. People voted for change at the Federal Election this year. They didn’t get much change in the budget tonight. It was pretty bland, pretty disappointing. It’s left an awful lot of people behind, but the top end of town are pretty happy with it.
Greens Treasury spokesman Nick McKim, Malcolm Roberts of One Nation and Jacqui Lambie, great to see you all. Thanks for joining.
Thank you.
Thank you Kieran.
Thank you for your company at home, here on our Sky News.
The Senate has voted in favour of a Malcolm Roberts motion this afternoon calling on the government to release a business case prepared for the Government by Townsville Enterprise Development Centre. Senator Roberts said:
“One Nation has scored a win for North Queensland with the Senate ordering the government to publish its confidential business case behind Hells Gate Dam.”
“The business case was given to the State Government in July and passed on to the Federal Government in September. The Albanese Government wants to keep the Hells Gate Dam business case a secret because they don’t want to build any dams in this country.”
“This business case will be especially embarrassing because the Labor Budget delivered last night removed $5.4 billion dollars previously allocated for the dam.”
“We need water for Queensland to thrive. This dam and many others should have been started decades ago so we can capture the La Nina rains which are currently swelling rivers before flowing straight out to sea.”
Only Labor voted against the motion in an attempt to keep the Hells Gate Dam business case secret however One Nation was successful by 40 votes to 19. The government must table the business case in the Senate no later than 9:30am tomorrow, 27 October 2022.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Hells-Gates%400.75x.png?fit=932%2C525&ssl=1525932Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2022-10-26 18:47:422022-10-26 18:47:47Media Release: Hells Gates Dam Business Case To Be Revealed After One Nation Motion
Who would have thought that affluence would be measured by who could afford lettuces at $20/kg, rather than Lamborghinis? The humble zucchini is now $2 each, and meat and fuel prices are continuing to rise. Inflation will remain with us for the next 18 months.
A small percentage of these rises are caused by supply issues relating to the war in the Ukraine however to blame Putin is to misdirect the blame to a convenient fall guy. Australian governments cannot use the war in Ukraine and Putin to explain away the prices rises and supply issues. Like COVID, Ukraine’s war has highlighted the deep flaws already existing in Australia’s approach to strategic industries.
Years of flawed climate ideology has destroyed our ability to grow food in Australia.
The government’s forced uptake of expensive, unreliable wind and solar power at the expense of cheap sources has increased electricity bills, one of the largest costs of doing business at every stage from farm to table.
Australia imports 1.7 million tonnes of the most common form of fertilizer – urea and only produces 200,000 tonnes locally, most of that here in Queensland. Urea is made from natural gas. Australia has one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas so why are we paying 400% more for imported products when Australia could be self-sufficient?
Australian Governments have been asleep at the wheel when it comes to protecting strategic industries such as fertilizer. Production shortages will continue and prices will continue to rise and that is on successive short-sighted, LNP and Labor State and Federal Governments.
There is also “green tape”, thousands of pages of heavy handed, draconian laws which do very little to protect the environment and are not based on solid data or science. Instead, they just make it too hard or too expensive for many farmers to use their land. In Queensland some farmers are being prevented from working their land at all.
Our most essential need for surviving and thriving is water. Supposed environmentalists have stopped major dam building initiatives for nearly 30 years. Responsible use and environmental management is of course necessary. Australia has enough water to feed and clothe the world. A lack of vision and forward planning from politicians means that we are at the whim of every weather cycle.
If there’s one thing we should have learnt from the COVID response and now from regional conflicts it is this. Australia can’t rely on the rest of the world. We need to be able to grow every bit of our own food here with minimal government interference.
More than that, Australia has an obligation to use the gifts this country has been blessed with to take our place in the worthwhile endeavour to feed and clothe those who would otherwise be in need.
Our farmers have been extraordinary in their commitment to growing food and fibre because this is a noble endeavour. Successive LNP and Labor Governments have made this endeavour harder and harder in the name of ideology and failed climate “science”.
Now the result of years of mismanagement is being felt in petrol stations and supermarkets across Australia.
Australians can no longer afford to go backwards at the hands of climate zealots whose inner-urban, well-off lifestyles are the least affected by climate madness.
Build dams, install the cheapest available power sources and get government out of the tractor-driver’s seat. If Australia is to survive coming food crises, we must do all of this now.
An old quote says a country is only three missed meals away from a revolution. We have enough arable land to feed Australia and millions overseas, government just needs to get out of the way and let farmers do what they do best.
When the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) allocates water to farmers at the start of the season, they do it based on a very conservative ‘extreme dry’ scenario.
This means farmers are allocated far less water then they should be. If the rainfall for the following season is above the extreme dry scenario (it very frequently is) the MDBA will allocate excess water to the farmers, but at the end of the season.
This end of season allocation is nearly useless to farmers as they need certainty from the start to be able to plant the amount of crops to match their water allocation. The MDBA seem to think they have a crystal ball and predict every year will be a drought. Farmers miss out, crops aren’t planted, small communities are slowly destroyed and less Australian grown food is on our shelves as a result.
MDBA questioning part 1: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/menindee-lakes-sdl-water-acquisitions-and-lock-zero-mdba-part-1/
MDBA questioning part 2: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/why-did-the-government-vote-against-a-water-trading-register-mdba-part-2/
Transcript
[CHAIR] Senator Roberts, I believe you have one question before we release the agency.
[Senator Roberts] Mr Reynolds, you gave us a statement here at Senate estimates on 28 May 2021, and I’ll just read from that:
Finally, the March rain has delivered a more positive forecast for the next irrigation year compared to the same time last year. Indicative opening allocations for next year under a conservative extreme dry scenario are …
Then you gave us the releases. In fact, the rain in that period was well above average, with some areas experiencing record falls. This is from your website. Even the area in red is now blue. I’m not blaming you for the weather forecast, by the way. Dam levels are from 92 per cent. It seems that farmers always start with minimal water allocations and then later, after the season, farmers get offered some more that farmers can’t use. So farmers have missed an opportunity to make more money. Surely this has to stop. Who provided the ‘extreme dry’ scenario? When was it changed to ‘pouring down’, as in this year? Did the use of the ‘extreme dry’ scenario cause farmers to lose early season water allocations?
[Mr Reynolds] No, it doesn’t. When we do our analysis, we model a range of scenarios. I don’t recall exactly the words in that statement, but I would have quoted from one of those scenarios, which was extreme dry—very conservative. States, under their allocation frameworks, provide the allocation to irrigators. The MDBA’s role is to advise the states on the volume of water they might expect to have under a range of scenarios. States adopt a conservative approach to allocating water to make sure they don’t over-allocate early in the season and are unable to deliver it later in the season—that is a much poorer outcome. When the MDBA provides advice to the states on the water they might have available, we provide them a range of scenarios, not just the extreme dry, and they work within their own allocation framework on where they actually make an allocation decision.
[Senator Roberts] On whose advice do you base that consideration?
[Mr Reynolds] The MDBA does the statistical analysis of projected inflows for the season and develops those estimates of the volumes of water that might be available to each of the states, applying the water sharing arrangements that are specified under the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement. The states then use their allocation frameworks and their assessment of the appropriate level of risk in making allocation decisions.
[Senator Roberts] Thank you. Chair, we understand that there was a discussion about Yanco, which I hadn’t intended asking questions about. We’re going to evaluate the Yanco decision, because it is significant to us, but I’m not going to ask questions.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/st-s_90Uxm4/0.jpg360480Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2022-03-04 11:08:532022-03-04 11:12:36Farmers always left high and dry by water allocations – MDBA Part 3
The Murray Darling Basin plan has been a disaster for regional communities. Overwhelming complexity, water being flushed out to sea and bureaucrats thinking they know better than everyone else have caused enormous damage.
Despite the evidence, the government and MDBA refuse to take responsibility for the mess they’ve made.
MDBA questioning part 2: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/why-did-the-government-vote-against-a-water-trading-register-mdba-part-2/
MDBA questioning part 3: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/farmers-always-left-high-and-dry-by-water-allocations-mdba-part-3/
Transcript
CHAIR: Alright; thank you. Senator Roberts, over to you.
Senator Roberts: Mr Taylor, I’d like to reference an exchange we had at a previous estimates regarding Menindee Lakes. I’ll quote from Hansard. I said:
So, Menindee Lakes is a vital component of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan?
You said:
It’s a vital component of our environmental management of the system.
Then I said:
And it’ll stay there.
You said:
And we’re actually getting those golden perch out of that system, connected through the Great Darling Anabranch, down into the Murray and distributing those fish. They become callop, as they’re called in South Australia, and they travel thousands of kilometres over their life. So, this is a critical part of what we’re doing.
That was not an answer to my question. You dodged my question, so let me try again. Will the Murray-Darling Basin Authority keep the Menindee Lakes as an environmentally important wetland having the same area as it currently has, including water storage with the current capacity, with the level, of course, decided by basin inflows? This is Queensland water, and we’d like to see it used properly.
Mr Taylor : Not sure I’m in a position to answer on behalf of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority in terms of feature plans and management. I think the other thing is that the Menindee system is a jointly managed lake and water resource, jointly managed between New South Wales, the Commonwealth, South Australia and Victoria. So I’m not in a position to talk about—
Senator Roberts: Is anyone from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority who could answer that question here?
Ms Connell : Mr Reynolds.
Senator Roberts: Will Menindee stay as it is, a vital part of the environment?
Mr Reynolds : As discussed earlier, New South Wales is scoping, or rescoping, the Menindee project, now called the Better Baaka project. That anticipates changes to the Menindee infrastructure and the operating rules for it. As departmental colleagues explained earlier, we’re yet to have a scope of that project brought forward by the New South Wales government. I can’t give you the assurance that you’ve asked for because that rescope project will inevitably change arrangements at Menindee Lakes. I think the proposal for the project is to look at how things can be done differently. If the project proceeds, then I think the circumstance at Menindee will be different to what they’ve been in the past.
Senator Roberts: So you can’t give me—
Ms Connell : It will continue to be subject to water resource plans and water sharing plans which will contain requirements in relation to environmental measures and environmental outcomes.
Mr Reynolds : Absolutely. The project in terms of its development will have to consider environmental impacts and benefits that can be achieved ultimately, but, until we see the scope of the works, I can’t advise on what the changes on the Menindee arrangements would be.
Senator Roberts: Setting aside the sustainable diversion limit acquisitions currently underway, how much water is still required to complete the sustainable diversion limit acquisitions? I’d like a figure. Secondly, how much is required to complete water acquisition, the baseline diversion limits?
Ms Connell : We addressed some of those questions this morning. The 605 sustainable diversion limit adjustment measure program is made up of about 36 projects for which a gigalitre component was identified when those projects were conceived. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority will go through a process we refer to as reconciliation in the lead-up to 1 July 2024, and I’ll let Mr Reynolds talk you through that.
Senator Roberts: Okay.
Ms Connell : Earlier this morning we provided an update on progress towards the 450 in terms of current entitlement holdings that are with the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, projects that are contracted and projects we are in discussions with states over.
Mr Reynolds : In terms of the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism reconciliation process, the authority is required to take a decision in December 2023 as to whether or not a reconciliation is required. That decision can’t be taken earlier than that, because states are able to advise notifications to modifications of projects up until that point in time. So we won’t have clarity about what the package of works looks like until that point in time. If, on the basis of our understanding of the projects, their progress and the condition they’re likely to be in in June 2024, the authority determines that the adjustment amount is likely to be different than what was determined in the original decision, we will undertake a reconciliation. We will assess the projects as they are notified at the end of December 2023 and make an assessment of the volume of water, or the offset that they will achieve at that point in time.
Senator Roberts: You have a document on the website of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority entitled ‘Progress on Water Recovery’. Under the heading ‘Summary of surface water recovery progress’ it states:
Following the amendments to the Basin Plan, the overall target for water recovery is 2,075 GL/y plus 450 GL/y of efficiency measures by 2024.
That’s 2,525 in total. And then, on the third page, under the heading ‘Total water recovery still required’ it is just 46 gigalitres.
Ms Connell : We addressed those figures earlier this morning as well. The gap bridging target under the Basin Plan is 2,075 gigalitres—2,100, and I think five gigalitres have been recovered and are held by way of entitlements with the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. So 98 per cent of the target has been reached, but there remain about 46 gigalitres across the basin that need to be recovered from different water resource plan areas.
Senator Roberts: The other comment Mr Reynolds has already covered, so thank you for that. Before I move on, how much water is required to complete the baseline diversion limits, the up-water?
Ms Connell : I guess there are three overall programs. There’s the water recovery target of 2,075 gigalitres, so there’s 46 gigalitres still to go there. Then there is the 450 up-water program, as it is known, which I referred to earlier in terms of what’s being delivered, what’s contracted and discussions we’re having with states. Then the third program is the 605 sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism program, which Mr Reynolds was discussing in terms of the reconciliation process that happens in 2024. There are 36 projects which go to make up that program of work that South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales have to deliver, and the authority will look at that program of works at the end of next year to determine whether reconciliation needs to happen to identify whether the 605 will be met or what component of it will be met.
Senator Roberts: As I’ve discussed before with Mr Glyde and Mr Reynolds and also the previous water commissioner, it’s a very complex issue, isn’t it? The whole thing is very complex, with many variables and a lot of variation.
Ms Connell : There are some key, major complex areas of work. The Basin Plan is a significant water reform, and there are some complex components, as you would expect in a system, I think, where there are 20 surface water areas and about 13 groundwater systems.
Senator Roberts: Then we have a naturally variable climate. The north varies considerably, in a different way from the south. So I would raise that for the future. Turning to the south-east drains SDL acquisition, Mr Reynolds, a reminder of your answer at the last estimates:
The water from the south-east drains has been put forward by the South Australian government as an SDL adjustment mechanism project. So the water that comes from the south-east drains into the southern lagoon will be accounted for through that process.
That means it will be counted as SDL. How much water is the Murray-Darling Basin Authority counting against the remaining SDL target for the south-east drains restoration flow?
Mr Reynolds : As we’ve explained previously, the assignment of individual volumes to projects in terms of the adjustment mechanism can only be an estimate, because the whole package of projects is modelled as a whole, and they interact with one another. We have made a range of estimates against individual projects. I will see if I can get the number for that particular project. I don’t think I have it in my papers here. I will have to get someone to provide that to me, but I will provide it this morning.
Senator Roberts: I would be very interested to see that number. I’m wondering if we’ve just found some more water.
Mr Reynolds : Well, the south-east drains project is part of the adjustment mechanism, so it’s been accounted for.
Senator Roberts: It is my view that this is a significant unaccountable flow—it hasn’t been to date—and may provide a substantial part of the remaining SDL acquisition that can both take the pressure off farmers elsewhere in the basin while restoring the amazing Coorong wetland and moderating extreme salination in Lake Albert by flushing from the south-east, not from the north-west; from the north-west is not really flushing. Have you the south-east inflows? I think the answer was ‘no’ in the last Senate estimates in October. Have you modelled the south-east inflows, both aquifer and surface flow? How much water is available? How much can be redirected—and this is really important—without interfering with agricultural production?
Mr Reynolds : We haven’t modelled that directly. The South Australian government manages that part of the system. We have consulted with them about the volumes. There’s not a direct estimate available of the total flow from the south-east drains, including through the groundwater systems into the Coorong. The operation of the south-east drains does provide water back to the southern lagoon in the Coorong, and that scheme has been developed and the operating rules have been developed to achieve that. There are requirements to manage the flows through the south-east drains. It is drainage from agricultural land. It does carry a nutrient load. There are particular management challenges with that water. So part of the south-east drainage scheme passes water through wetlands and the like to remove nutrient loads from that water before it enters the Coorong. If that’s not done, there are undesirable ecological impacts in the Coorong itself. That limits somewhat the volume of water that comes from the south-east drains. The South Australian government is continuing to work through those issues.
Senator Roberts: As I understand it, the drains are made by humans? They’re not natural and they take up a significant quantity of water, straight to the ocean.
Mr Reynolds : The area that’s been drained naturally was a low-lying marshy area, and water tended to lie in that area. Some of it would have seeped through groundwater systems to the sea. Some of it would have made its way to the Coorong. The drains are man-made structures that have taken water from that area and dried it out and made it more productive as an agricultural area.
Senator Roberts: I’ve been there and seen those drains. They’re definitely man-made. There is a belief that there’s a significant amount of water to be recaptured and sent to the Coorong.
Mr Reynolds : And water is being captured through that system and does flow to the Coorong. I think from memory it’s in the order of 26 gigalitres, on average. Obviously it would change with seasonal conditions. In wet years it will be more; in drier years it would be less. But it’s of that order.
Senator Roberts: My understanding is there’s a lot more water to be captured than that.
Mr Reynolds : I think the South Australian government clearly has an interest in trying to improve the health of the Coorong. They’ve undertaken an enormous amount of work in that region to do that. I’m sure they’re examining whether or not it would be beneficial to take more water from that region if it’s possible to do so, for that purpose.
Senator Roberts: So the Coorong problem has been man-made, not by the rest of the basin, but by diversion of water that used to go through the Coorong straight to the ocean? I’m not being critical, because in those days they were trying to look after their narrow scope. That’s something that, to return the environment to its natural state, would require a lot of water to go back to the Coorong and keep it clean.
Mr Reynolds : There are obviously significant volumes of water diverted from the basin, which has reduced the volume of water that reaches the end of the system, particularly coming down the Murray. Part of the challenge is to address some of those issues. To get back to the natural balance of what happened in the Coorong before river regulation would require all of the water that’s subsequently been diverted to be returned to the environment. No-one is proposing to do that. We’re looking for alternative solutions and alternative balances.
Senator Roberts: Shouldn’t that south-east portion be counted as part of the basin? You just said water is diverted from the basin, but it’s not included in the basin yet?
Mr Reynolds : I’m sorry; when I said that I meant water is diverted from upstream right across the basin. Very significant volumes are diverted.
Senator Roberts: This water’s going straight to the ocean, and doing damage by not going through the Coorong.
Mr Reynolds : I think the benefits that can be provided to the Coorong, by diverting some water from the south-east drains, are being realised through the project that’s been implemented. I’m sure the South Australian government and others will continue to examine where additional benefits might be able to be accrued. Significant money from the Commonwealth government has gone to the Goyder Institute. I think $8 million has been committed to examine options and other interventions that might be possible around the Coorong, Lower Lakes and the Murray Mouth. That could include activities within the south-east drain system, although that has been explored fairly extensively already.
Senator Roberts: It’s very complex, and it’s made even more complicated by the politics involved at the state and federal levels. We will end it there for now.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but could you make this your last question? Sorry, Senator Roberts! We knew what was going on.
Senator Ruston :They don’t look anything alike.
CHAIR: They don’t.
Senator Roberts: I don’t know who you’re insulting the most. That was my last question.
CHAIR: Make this your last question, Senator Roberts.
Senator Roberts: Concerning Lock Zero, in the last estimates, you spoke about engineering challenges and other issues, and you said, ‘Lock Zero was examined in some detail.’ If salt water is used in the Lower Lakes to protect against sulphur emissions—and that would be a one-in-100-year type drought; it’s an absolute last resort—then suddenly we will be wishing we’d built Lock Zero, won’t we? Doesn’t the Murray-Darling Basin Authority or the department have documentation on Lock Zero? Your comment ‘examined in some detail’ suggests such documentation exists. It seems like too significant a project not to have some formal process underway.
Mr Reynolds : During the millennium drought, Lock Zero was considered as to whether or not it would be an arrangement that would help protect the Lower Lakes. Part of that was looking at what flow would be required past Lock Zero to ensure that the Lower Lakes retained their ecological character. There is significant concern that if the flow of fresh water to the Lower Lakes was terminated, and if just sea water was allowed in, that would progressively concentrate through evaporation and become hypersaline, and so the Lower Lakes would not be a natural estuary.
Senator Roberts: It’s not natural at the moment, with the barrage, is it?
Mr Reynolds : No, but the Lower Lakes naturally would have had a much larger volume of fresh water flowing to the Lower Lakes, to the end of the system. We take a lot of water out upstream for irrigation and other productive purposes, and so the natural balance of mixing of fresh and salt water at the Lower Lakes cannot be reinstated unless there’s a lot more water coming down the river system. Building Lock Zero does not alleviate that issue.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/NMcFtd7qQbE/0.jpg360480Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2022-03-04 11:05:222022-03-04 11:15:54Menindee Lakes, SDL water acquisitions and Lock Zero – MDBA Part 1
Speculative water trading is a blight on our country. Even still, the Water Act 2007 specified that a transparent, public register of water trades should be established. 15 years later, we still have no public register.
The most recent attempt to establish a public register, my amendment to the Water Act, was voted down by the Liberals, Nationals and Labor. The question is, what have they got to hide?
MDBA questioning part 1: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/menindee-lakes-sdl-water-acquisitions-and-lock-zero-mdba-part-1/
MDBA questioning part 3: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/farmers-always-left-high-and-dry-by-water-allocations-mdba-part-3/
Transcript
[CHAIR] Senator Roberts.
[Senator Roberts] Mr Reynolds, as a senator for Queensland, I have to cover many issues and, although I’ve travelled the entire Murray-Darling Basin, have overflown it and crisscrossed it many times, in listening to people I just can’t keep all the acronyms and numbers at hand. I just can’t keep them in my head. Fortunately, we have many farmers who watch these Senate estimates sessions in particular and they let me know when I’ve missed the details, and they’re excellent auditors. They know, from being on the ground, when I’m getting nonanswers. They tell me, and they’re blunt auditors. It seems to me that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is now avoiding the numbers for both acquisition and total targets. The Murray-Darling Basin—and Senator Patrick knows this—is all about numbers. The plan has reduced farmers’ businesses, rural communities and Australia’s agricultural capacity to a set of water numbers, supposedly, for the environment. Getting those numbers is like pulling teeth, and I welcome Senator Patrick’s partial success on the 605 earlier. For the rural community watching this at home to get a hint for the future, I’d like to ask again. I’m asking for three simple numbers. How much water has the government acquired so far under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan? How much is under acquisition? How much will the shortfall be against the plan in the absence of further projects, and where do you intend to get that water from? The third question was two combined.
[Senator Davey] Senator Roberts, do you mind if I throw one in as well to complement yours? From the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, how much actual wet stuff allocation do you have this year? There’s the difference between the entitlements you have, but this year the allocations may be over the 2,750 gigalitre rule. Who knows?
[Senator Patrick] And the costs associated with each of those [inaudible] too.
[Senator Davey] We want to know everything!
[Senator Roberts] We do.
[Ms Connell] I’ve lost track of the question! I’ll just provide the headline numbers, and then I’ll ask Mr Taylor to come to the table and talk to what he has available in this water year. In terms of surface water recovery, as I said before the break, 2,106 gigalitres of surface water has been recovered and is now held in entitlements by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. In relation to groundwater, 35.3 gigalitres has been recovered. In relation to the 450, two gigalitres in entitlements have been returned to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. We have another 16.4 under contract, and we are discussing arrangements in relation to about another 10 to 15 gigalitres with the states. In relation to the 605 gigalitres, the concept of that program of works is to—in lieu of 605 gigalitres being recovered from the consumptive irrigation pool, there are a suite of 36 projects which deliver environmental benefits in lieu of that. The framework under the Basin Plan requires the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to have a look at the end of next year at the progress of those environmental projects and the extent to which they will contribute, from an environmental measure, towards the 605. It is quite a complex concept.
[Senator Roberts] It’s very complex.
[Ms Connell] Yes. I do appreciate that. In terms of the current holdings that the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has to utilise this year, I’ll pass to Mr Taylor.
[Mr Taylor] This year, we have new allocations, up to 31 December, of 2,054 gigalitres. Up to the end of that same six-month period we have used 1,038. So we’ve used about half our water for this year at halfway through the year.
[Senator Davey] How much did you carry over from the previous year?
[Mr Taylor] The previous year’s carryover was 738 gigalitres.
[Senator Davey] That would have made available this year 2,7—
[Mr Taylor] 85.
[Senator Davey] Thank you.
[Ms Connell] I will just note that the department does have a webpage that sets out these water recovery targets, so we’d be happy to provide you with that information.
[Senator Roberts] We will come asking if we need more. Minister, the South Australian water storage is outside of South Australia—
[Senator Ruston] Yes, for geological reasons.
[Senator Roberts] We’re not complaining about that. South Australia’s a valid part of the plan. This is a national plan that includes—
[Senator Ruston] Thank you very much, Senator Roberts. We’re very delighted that you would think that.
[Senator Roberts] While we’re concerned about wasting our water, we’re not concerned about supplying South Australia and Adelaide, in particular, with water—
[Senator Patrick] It’s not Queensland’s water [inaudible].
[Senator Roberts] Well, we can argue that—
[Senator Patrick] It’s national water.
[CHAIR] Let’s not get into that.
[Senator Roberts] I’m not interested in getting into that. I’m just saying that South Australia has a right to that water. It’s longstanding.
[Senator Ruston] Everybody in the Murray-Darling Basin has a right. We can go into a discussion about ‘riparian right’ and the like but the plan outlines that this is a shared resource that has to be maximised to the benefit of all people in Australia.
[Senator Roberts] We want to protect the South Australians but we also want to protect the environment and we want to protect all the other stakeholders. It gets messy. It’s had a long history; some argue it is ingrained in our federation. South Australian water storage is outside South Australia, at Dartmouth, which South Australia partly funded, Lake Victoria and Menindee Lakes. Menindee Lakes has held water eight years out of 10. Even though government raised the natural banks a little to create a larger storage, Menindee has been a natural wetland since before Western settlement. Menindee stored South Australian water and local—
[Senator Ruston] They’re ephemeral, aren’t they?
[Senator Roberts] You could argue that, but they have stored water eight years out of 10. Menindee stores South Australian water and local irrigation water. While that water is there it sustains the amazing wetland around Menindee. And that has developed to counter natural climate variability. In Australia, the climate is more variable than in probably any other continent. But we wonder why a frog near a coalmine is an environmental matter of national significance yet 47,000 hectares of wetland is not. With 220,000 bird movements a year, it is a national treasure. And now the testimony in this place is that the state and federal governments are going to murder Menindee. The Murray-Darling Basin is murdering an environmental treasure to come up with water to meet environmental targets. That just doesn’t make sense to me.
[Senator Ruston] I don’t think there would be anybody else in the room who would agree with your term ‘murder Menindee’. That is a highly emotive way of describing how, collectively, everybody is trying to work together to engineer a solution to ensure the long-term sustainability of the river system whilst dealing with the social and economic implications of water recovery and the like that minimises any detrimental impacts. The sole purpose of the plan was to protect the amazing riverine environment, so I cannot accept your terminology around what’s happening at Menindee. At the moment, we do not have the submission back from the New South Wales government in relation to the proposal for activities at Menindee. Until we can actually see that, I don’t know that anyone could be making the kind of assessment you’re making. I acknowledge that you accept that the plan is for all Australians, particularly all those who live in the basin, but you are picking on one particular component of it and suggesting that it is environmental vandalism when at this stage we don’t really have any clarity around what is going on there. We need to be really careful that we don’t compare what happened prior to the development of the river system and what is happening now. There has been so much intervention along the river—through dams, locks, weirs and all sorts of infrastructure, including the urban build-up in towns—that it’s almost impossible for us to do anything apart from assess what’s before us at the moment. I would counsel against talking about what Menindee Lakes used to be like and what the Lower Lakes used to be like because so much has changed in the years since irrigation has occurred along the river. So we need to manage what is before us now.
[Senator Roberts] I accept that. At the same time, a fundamental target for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been to restore the Coorong, and that cannot be restored while we’re avoiding the science. But let’s move on to something else—
[Senator Ruston] It’s really about the words that you use. We seek for the Coorong to be healthy. Does that restore it under the true definition of the word ‘restore?’ I would suggest that that is very difficult. I mean, the barrages are there. They weren’t there.
[Senator Roberts] The barrages are there. The drains are there.
[Senator Ruston] Yes. When we talk about ‘restoring’, what we want to see is a healthy Coorong, a healthy Murray-Darling Basin system. We want to see environmental assets protected. But we also want to protect the river communities because they are such an important part of the economy of Australia and all the people who are supported by it. I think we need to be careful of the words we use because we don’t want to give the impression that somehow we’re going to turn the river system back to exactly what it looked like before there was any intervention. What we’re seeking to do is make sure the environmental outcomes are good.
[Senator Roberts] One thing that is very frustrating in the parliament is that so few decisions are made on data and science. They’re made on emotions, whims and looking after vested interests. You said everyone wants to protect the environment. I’ll get onto more of that in other questions. Minister, I have trust for you, so I’m not having a go at you. I’m having a go at several governments in the past and possibly this government. I don’t have much faith in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan because it’s not based on data. We don’t measure much of the river system, yet we’re allocating water. An ABC report was entitled ‘Basin states agree to support ACCC Murray-Darling Basin water market reforms to regulate brokers and market behaviour’. Last year when I moved an amendment to force the water trading register into life, which is a requirement of the Water Act 2007—the one that the Murray-Darling Basin has been required to produce since then—the Liberals, Nationals and Labor voted against it. I was told there was no need for a water trading register. It’s just speculation. There is no profiteering and no need for a register of water trading. What changed so that the states are now taking action?
[Senator Ruston] I’m not sure that I agree with the fact that the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Labor Party last year thought there was no need for—
[Senator Roberts] They voted against the amendment to bring in the water register.
[Senator Ruston] Yes, but there were a number of other complex technicalities around what was being proposed at the time, so I don’t think you can naturally jump to the conclusion that the government or the opposition didn’t believe that water regulation could potentially improve the operation of the river systems and improve the operation of how water traded. I think possibly it was that the mechanism by which you were proposing to do it was not something that we were necessarily agreeing to. But I’m happy to take that on notice and get you some more information because I have to say I can’t remember exactly.
[Senator O’Neill] Senator Ruston, just before you continue. Is there any chance that the document Senator Roberts was referring to could be tabled?
[Senator Ruston] That’s just a media story, isn’t it, Senator?
[Senator Roberts] Yes, this is a media story from the ABC. They’re talking about a mandatory code of conduct.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, would you like to have that tabled so others can refer to it?
[Senator Roberts] Yes.
CHAIR: Thank you.
[Senator Roberts] It just seems like this code of conduct is a way to smokescreen their reluctance to have a water trading register. It’s a way of avoiding the issue.
[Senator Ruston] I might speak with the secretary. In terms of the ACCC review and implementation I wonder if you could give Senator Roberts a bit of an update about where that’s at. We could see if in any way you can alleviate some of the concerns he appears to have.
[Ms Connell] Water trade and water markets are principally the responsibility of state jurisdictions at the moment, so states and the ACT are responsible for having and maintaining water registers. Each of them does have a register in place. In terms of the media release you’re referring to, it was to indicate that the water market reform process had been set up. Minister Pitt announced last year that he would appoint a principal adviser. Mr Daryl Quinlivan has been appointed to work with states to take what is a very significant report by the ACCC—I think it goes to about 700 pages and makes a broad range of recommendations—
[Senator Roberts] It has some serious concerns.
[Ms Connell] That’s right. Mr Quinlivan has been working with Basin states, supported by an advisory group, and consulting stakeholders more broadly to determine what should be the initial recommendations that are progressed. We can table a copy of Mr Quinlivan’s December advice. The advice sets out the five principal initial reforms that he recommends be progressed, and the basin states support recommendations in principle. Critically, at the moment there’s no code of practice to govern the behaviour of water market intermediaries, water brokers, so one thing the states agreed to is the development of a code that can put a compliance framework around the way that part of the market operates.
He also recommended that the Commonwealth introduce legislation to prohibit insider trading and market manipulation, so that’s something the department is looking very closely at. He made recommendations around collection and publication of trade data and a number of other recommendations. He is now working with basin states and stakeholders to develop a final draft which is due to the minister in June this year. So, the terms of reference for the work that he’s doing are on our website and we can provide you with a copy of that as well.
[Senator Roberts] Ms Connell and Senator Ruston, can you see the public and farmers, in particular, are very concerned? I haven’t discussed this with you, but apparently you had a successful business with flowers. Water is key to that, and you’ve developed remarkable efficiencies in the use of that water, as I understand it. I’m not a farmer, but I know listening to farmers that water is like gold. It dramatically increases the productivity of farmland, so it’s worth a lot of money. But it’s also worth a lot of money to traders and speculators, and we’ve removed the connection between water allocations and farmers’ property ownership.
[Senator Ruston] You’re talking about the unbundling of water from land?
[Senator Roberts] Correct; I am. What I’m saying is that, in the absence of significant measuring of water flows right across the basin, in the absence of science, the contradiction of science and the highly variable climate, which is natural—and we’ve got the north being different from the south, and people not understanding each other—there’s a lot of suspicion that the government, and governments in the past, have simply protected water traders because we still don’t have a water trading register. Whether that’s a state and territory issue, it needs to be done. And now we’ve got the ACCC saying there are significant concerns even though they didn’t identify any particular fraud. This does not build confidence in the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, nor the plan.
[Ms Connell] I think there are three components to the question. So, under the constitution, states are principally responsible for water resource management, so the obligation is on them to establish and maintain water registers. Each of the Murray-Darling Basin jurisdictions has in place a water register at this point in time.
[Senator Roberts] I’m not interested in why we can’t do it; I’m interested in what we should do.
Ms Connell : It’s being done—
[Senator Roberts] It’s a major impediment to you.
Ms Connel l : and you can get access to those registers online. I think the Bureau of Meteorology now aggregates information from each of those state registers in their water information portal, so we can provide you with the link to that quite easy to use website.
[Senator Roberts] Thank you.
[Ms Connell] I would just like to get on the record that the ACCC didn’t find any evidence of speculative activity.
[Senator Roberts] I just said that, but they had significant concerns.
[Ms Connell] One of their key recommendations was to get in place a code backed by enforcement and compliance powers to improve the integrity and transparency of the market, and that’s what the basin states have agreed to and the principal adviser has reported on. We’re now working with basin states to look at how we can develop that.
[Senator O’Neill] But it hasn’t happened. What’s the date for that to commence? Senator Roberts, I’ve got a whole lot of questions that I want to follow up on. When you get out there and talk to people, as Senator Roberts has said, they just tell you straight up about—
[Senator Roberts] The corruption.
[Senator O’Neill] The corruption that’s happening. Their computers aren’t fast enough to compete with people who are in the space. You would’ve heard it as much as I’ve heard it. What’s the timing on the response to this?
[Ms Connell] We’re currently working with basin states to look at the development of a draft code. One of the key things will be to consult with stakeholders on what that draft code will look like. When making changes that will impact on a regulated community it’s important to undertake a process whereby we publish a proposed draft code, provide an opportunity for comment and also provide a period of time for that regulated community to come into compliance. We’re actively working with states on progressing that proposal.
[Senator O’Neill] But do you have a time line?
[Ms Connell] I can take that on notice; I don’t have it in front of me.
[Senator Roberts] I brought eight copies of an article from News Weekly, ‘Murray-Darling Basin Plan ruining the Edward River’. Once again, we’re talking about environmental damage of a type never before seen along the Murray system, caused in all probability by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The first paragraph of this article says:
The Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP), which has the goal of protecting the environment—
As Senator Ruston said—
is instead destroying it.
And there are so many examples; it’s the same type of damage that we’re seeing elsewhere. We’ve raised this about the Murray itself. When is the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, or the department, going to convene a proper public inquiry into environmental destruction along the Murray River system? Landholders along the Edward are just flabbergasted at how much damage is being done in the name of the environment.
[Mr Reynolds] The Edward system, in effect, runs parallel to the Murray. Part of the work we’re looking at around the choke is how we manage water through that part of the system, and that includes water through the Edward River as well. Clearly, there are a lot of demands on the system to manage it for consumptive use as well as for the environment. One of the key things we’re looking at as part of the Barmah Choke Feasibility Study is how to manage the system holistically, not just moving a problem from one part of the system to another. So there’s a lot of activity to examine the Edward system as well.
Erosion is a natural feature within our river systems. We have a heavily regulated—
[Senator Roberts] Excuse me; some people would disagree with you. They’re saying the amount of water and the duration of high river flows are quite unnatural. Farmers along the Murray and people along the Edward are saying the same thing. That’s what’s doing the damage, according to them.
[Senator O’Neill] Exactly, that’s what they’re saying to me too, Senator Roberts.
[Mr Reynolds] There’s no doubt that we’ve regulated the river system to achieve a whole lot of benefits which that provides, but that has substantially changed the natural flow patterns in the river. We have higher river flows through summer because we’re delivering water to meet irrigation demands which are critical to the prosperity of many communities throughout the basin. That’s one of the aspects of the Basin Plan: we work through that balance between environmental outcomes and the social and economic prosperity of communities throughout the basin as well.
There are going to be impacts on a regulated system—there’s no doubt about that. We’re looking, through the Barmah Choke Feasibility Study work, at options we might have to alleviate some of those pressures on that part of the river system—the Edward, the Murray and, indeed, the Goulburn system as well. I can’t say that there are no impacts on a regulated river system, but I guess those impacts are balanced against the other benefits that they provide to communities in a wide range of—
[Senator Roberts] I’m not accusing you—and I mean this sincerely—or anyone here of anything. Government in this country—and I’m not talking about the Morrison Joyce government, I’m talking about federal governance—is quite often about wealth transfer. The more regulation we have then the more that can be hidden. It’s built into this, the whole thing. There are just so many avenues for it to be loose and sloppy and the people who pay, time and time again, are the everyday Australians who pay for the mess in government.
I’m not having a go at you; I’m not looking at you in particular. I’m just saying that this is a mess. How can we sort it out so that the people and the environment stop paying the price for mistakes?
[Senator Davey] I think that finishing that choke study might be a good first step.
[Mr Reynolds] In that part of the river system, in particular, there is significant work, investigation and analysis on how we can manage some of these detrimental impacts while still achieving the good impacts that people are looking for.
Some of the impacts we’ve seen in terms of high river flows and the river flowing at higher flow rates, or at least at levels higher than it has in the past, are the result of lost capacity in the river system and the deposition of sand within the Choke. That means to get the same volume of water through the Choke and downstream that we had in the past, the river needs to run at a higher level for a longer period of time. That’s absolutely the challenge that we’re dealing with. The work that we’re doing to understand that, and to understand the options we have to take the pressure off the river system, is a critical part of that intervention.
[Senator Roberts] I’m saying the core problem may be something even deeper. Thank you.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/WgkBONZ6Sq0/0.jpg360480Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2022-03-04 11:02:002022-03-04 11:14:33Why did the Government vote against a water trading register? MDBA Part 2
The figures don’t lie, Australian farmers have saved the economy from a recession. While the government will always try to take credit for a good news story, I made this speech back in September celebrating the true heroes of Australia, the farmers on the ground.
Transcript
I recently spoke on mining exports keeping the Australian economy out of depression. Today I’m addressing the other good news story: agriculture. In the last 12 months, wheat prices are up 33 per cent, corn up 57 per cent, canola up 72 per cent, sugar up 65 per cent and—the one the Greens hate the most—cotton up 45 per cent. It’s not politicians keeping Australia out of a depression; it’s farmers’ hard work and resilience. Drought and cold from the current solar minimum are reducing crop yields worldwide.
At the same time, the drought in many places in Australia has ended. Prime Minister Morrison and Treasurer Frydenberg are taking credit for a strong economy that’s none of their doing. For years this parliament has been making life as hard as possible for farmers and irrigators. In 2019, One Nation asked this parliament to provide a measly 200 gigalitres of water from the Hume Dam to keep our farmers going through the drought. Labor, the Greens and the Liberals and their sell-out sidekicks the Nationals, teamed up to vote down our motion. As a result, the basin winter crop in 2019 failed.
Here we are in 2021 and the Murray-Darling Basin from Queensland to South Australia is at a high 80 per cent of water storage capacity. Hume and Dartmouth hold 5,700 gigalitres. The water the politicians said wouldn’t be there because of climate change is there. This parliament fails again. For weeks now up to 20 gigalitres a day of water that should have gone to farmers has been sent out to sea at the Murray mouth. With Lake Victoria’s storage full and Menindee filling quickly, flooding in the lower basin is a real possibility—and still farmers along the Murray and Murrumbidgee are receiving only 30 per cent water allocation.
At these crop prices, is this parliament mad? Give farmers their water and let them grow food and fibre to feed and clothe the world. We have one flag. We are one community. We are one nation. It’s time now to allow every Australian to lift themselves up through our own initiative
UPDATE: Labor has backflipped on their support for a public, transparent water register by voting down this amendment in the House of Representatives where it went after initially passing in the Senate with Labor’s support. As a result, a transparent public water trading register will not be established. Senator Roberts made a further speech here: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/labor-backflips-on-water-trading-register-in-dodgy-deal/
Senator Roberts has succeeded in passing a water trading register in the Senate tonight where others have failed over successive years.
Senator Roberts has campaigned tirelessly to protect farmers in the Murray Darling Basin, which extends from Queensland all the way to South Australia.
The MDB Plan has allowed corporate agriculture to outbid family farmers and dominate water trading.
Senator Roberts said, “The lack of a transparent water trading register has allowed aggressive traders to inflate prices and starve productive land of much needed water.
“This is forcing family farms off the land with a catastrophic cost to locals jobs and the ruination of rural communities,” he said.
The water trading register was expected to be put in place in 2009. The Government has spent $30 million between 2009 and 2012, has failed repeatedly and then gave up. Farmers have suffered because of this ineptness over the past decade.
“This water trading register will give the Inspector General of Water Compliance the information he needs to clean up water trading and restore confidence in Basin management,” Senator Roberts added.
Following the success in the Senate this amendment will move to the lower house where the government will struggle to find the numbers to oppose it.
“We are left bewildered as to why the Liberals and the Nationals would oppose a water trading register,” stated Senator Roberts.
With water availability, labour prices and government all against the farmer, it is too hard for smaller farms to survive and even the large farms are struggling.
If our farms fallover, regional towns will quickly follow and then the rest of the country will be in big trouble. Governments at every level need to help our regions be building cheap, reliable electricity and secure supplies of water.
Decades of government dropping the ball on these issues has left us in a scary position. I talk about this in my new segment, Our Nation Today, with farmer Trevor Cross and Mike Ryan.
Let me know what you think.
Transcript
[Malcolm Roberts] Regional Queensland literally feeds and clothes us, Yet so many short-sighted government policy decisions will hit these regions first and hit the regions hardest. Travelling around Queensland, I’m constantly reminded that the one-size-fits-all policies just don’t meet the needs of rural and regional centres. We’re talking about the fundamentals that urban areas take for granted. Affordable, secure, and reliable water, energy, and food. Reasonable insurance premiums and freight rates, roads, and rail fit for purpose. Access to health and education that gives people the confidence to settle in the regions. There’s nothing more fundamental than food.
A prosperous agricultural sector is essential for supplying Australia’s food needs and the needs of the rest of the world. In the financial year 2021, the gross value of agricultural production is estimated at $66 billion, a staggering figure. And it’s easy to forget that being a farmer is a tough gig because even in good years it’s 24/7 and the balancing acts of risks within a farmer’s control, and those beyond never stops. There’s been a lot of talk about an agriculture-led recovery after the COVID restrictions that smashed our economy and the need for confidence to pick up the pieces and to keep going. Many in our farming community have sustained shattering losses with ready to pick food being ploughed back in and a major reduction in the planting of next year’s crop, simply due to worker shortages.
I see a role for government in creating the right environment for businesses to flourish. Part of that is to help mitigate unnecessary risks, such as having strategically placed dams and a well-connected water infrastructure grid which should have happened years ago. So instead of the Queensland government spending $10 million to cart water for Stanthorpe when the town ran out, it would have been better spent on a longer term solution such as more town weirs to hold more water. We know that our water reserves and existing dams are not keeping up with population growth. Government should aim to minimise its unnecessary intrusions and yet any farmer will tell you that excessive regulations such as the reef regulations and vegetation management laws create an impossible business environment for farmers.
Layer upon layer upon layer of stupid and destructive rules and regulation leaves the farmer with ever-decreasing profits. And yet we expect farmers to just saddle up and continue to make it work. Today Mike Ryan talks with Trevor Cross, a successful Queensland horticultural grower based in Bundaberg. I first met Trevor in 2017 at his farm and was impressed with his passion for farming, his business savvy and the hard work that he and his team do everyday to put many veggies such as tomatoes, capsicums and zucchinis into our supermarkets.
[Mike Ryan] Trevor, thanks for joining us.
[Trevor Cross] Thanks Mike, good to meet you.
[Mike Ryan] Now, tell us about your farming business, the size of your holdings, where you’re located, what you grow and what you export.
[Trevor Cross] We’re in Bundaberg in Queensland, we farm about two and a half thousand acres of small crops. So we grow tomatoes, gourmet roma’s and cherry tomato. And then zucchinis, capsicums, chilies, melon, pumpkin, a few cucumber, snow peas, and sugar snaps, and just a few beans, so we spread that over about a nine-month period in the Bundaberg region. So most of our stuff actually goes Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne a little bit to Adelaide. And this year in New Zealand, it’ll open its exports again, it’s been out for 12 months with this virus. So it’s supposed to open up again this year, so hopefully that’ll be good for the industry.
[Mike Ryan] I can really empathise with what you do. I mean, my dad will probably kill me for this being from the land. I recall he actually decided to go into rockies and do rock melons and large acreage. Anyway, the bottom fell out of the market. And I recall he got a cheque from the bank for, I think it would have been something like sixpence in those days. And I’m thinking, why would you ever want to do this? And then he decided to go into avocados and citrus and stuff. And that’s just as terrifying. It’s a really hard business, isn’t it?
[Trevor Cross] Yeah. The biggest problem with farming it’s actually almost like an addiction. You go out and start growing something, it’s very, very hard to stop it. It’s not so much about money, I don’t think, when you’re a farmer. It’s about just seeing a crop planted, seeing the crop grow and getting it picked. But the biggest problem is there needs to be some rewards on the way through.
[Mike Ryan] What’s the greatest challenge, say, to business such as yours on the land?
[Trevor Cross] In our industry it’s, because it’s a high-labor industry, it’s probably, at the moment, getting enough people to actually harvest crops. Because when we’re in peak-season we have about 350 people here, so… And there is going to be a shortage. I’m not quite sure how far we’ll be down, whether it’s going to be 10- or 20-percent down. So that’s probably one of the hardest parts. Water supply’s another major component to our operation, and just general costing. The costs keep going up and up and up and the end prices doesn’t really reflect what it’s costing to do business, anymore.
[Mike Ryan] So you have two and a half thousand acres, which is a very large, large piece of land. Do you think the days of the smaller farmer, for example, 20 or 30 acres are gone, and that you need to have, just to accommodate your cost and make sure you get a decent return, that you’ve got to have a large business instead of those, not micro, but the smaller businesses used to be.
[Trevor Cross] It’s volume now, whereas before it was just a family, a family could actually survive on a hundred acres and live fairly comfortable, now a hundred acres unless you’re doing really niche market product, you would never, ever survive. So everything’s been turned into bigger farms. We’d be one of the largest, freehold personal farms in town now, there’s probably a couple other families about our size that are just doing it, and the rest is a lot of consolidated money from investment companies, and they’re now are doing nut trees, mainly.
[Mike Ryan] What’s greatest impact on your business when it comes to costs? Which ones are the ones that stand out? Is it labour?
[Trevor Cross] Yeah, Labour used to run about 33- to 35-percent we’d work on for labour, and the way it’s going, last year I think hit early forties, about 42-, 44-percent, and this year, unless there’s a big market change I think it’ll go 50%.
[Mike Ryan] Wow. That’s incredible, isn’t it? How do you survive?
[Trevor Cross] Well, I just hope that there’s actually money paid at the other end. At the point of sale, at the first point of sale at the marketplace, most stuff is fairly cheap. At the last point of sale, it could be three… between two and four times what it’s paid for. So, that’s what the average customer doesn’t think, They think if it’s dearer in the shop, the farmer’s making the money.
[Mike Ryan] I was talking to Senator Malcolm Roberts, and he was saying, just talking about how the consumer in the major metropolitan areas, they all think that the produce that they see almost is manufactured in the supermarket, but, you know, prior to that, you’ve got so many factors. I mean, from the farmer to the chain. Farmer, to the, what do you call it?
The grower. Not grower, the buyer who buys up for the land and then they on-sell it to someone else. And then it’s sold to the supermarket. You think from the farmer to the actual supermarket, ’cause my dad used to always say, he would love to be able to take out a shotgun with some pellets and get rid of those middlemen. Is it still the same headache and pain in the backside?
[Trevor Cross] The biggest problem is with the whole system, if you actually get out of the place what’s supposed to set the right price how do we know what the right price is? And I think the days when people were actually stealing at the first point of sale, I don’t think it’s there anymore because everyone’s fighting for a dollar. So they’re getting screwed down more and more. All the grower actually needs is probably about 20- 30-cents a kilo more and they become very sustainable. And that’s not a lot.
It’s only 2 to 3 dollars a box on average, and everyone’s paying bills, because the Ag industry, and this is not just what we do, It’s every Ag industry, there’s a lot of people get employed before it even gets to the farm. And then after it leaves the farm there’s a lot of people employed from transport, through to your retailers, your wholesalers, and then the processors… there’s many, many people relying on the farming industry.
[Mike Ryan]What are your thoughts of the future of farming, say, in Australia?
[Trevor Cross] Well, I know if we keep going down this track we can’t last much longer. Even our business now we’ve actually got 400 acres of nut trees, and we’ll probably continue to change over just because of the labour price and for our small profits we’re making out of employing all the people, we may as well not have them. We may as well just go to where it’s all mechanical.
So, I don’t know if my boys will actually take over and do what I do, ’cause it’s a seven-day-a-week job. You’ve got to be in amongst the people and see what’s happening. I actually think, even in this area around Bundaberg, there won’t be too much of this industry left within probably four or five years. I think the majors will be all gone.
[Mike Ryan] That’s just terrible, too, because once you have less growers like yourself then you’ve got this monopoly and the monopolies are not what we want. I mean, look at the US and you’ve got these multi-billion-dollar corporations that control the price of produce, although you go to a supermarket and they do the same thing there too, they screw down the grower, although the grower being a lot bigger than what they’ve dealt with, they’ve got their sort of, at least it’s coming up to almost 50-50 between the grower and the actual supermarket chain.
It’s a really, really tough life. What do you think is the most important thing in keeping our farming sector successful and growing? What do we actually need to do besides revise wages, for example, on the land. You can’t keep paying out 50%. You’re going to make no money.
[Trevor Cross] Yeah. Everyone’s entitled to money, Mike. The wage earner is entitled to money, and they all want to lead a good life, but we’ve just got to get a share of that sale price at the end. Basically, I think all growers need just a little bit more money, and it’s not a lot, a couple dollars a box, as I say, it’s not a lot of money. And then everyone’s happy because I don’t think any man who’s been on the land for all his life deserves to actually have the bank come and sell him up, because of the poor market prices. I think everyone can work together.
If capsicums or zucchinis or whatever, ’cause we’re only seasonal, we do about eight months a year in Bundaberg, and then the South is just finishing up now, they would have had the most horrible year in their life. And people have been on the land all their life and next minute they gotta sell their farms because of poor prices. It’s only a couple of dollars a box, they wouldn’t have needed much more and they’d be still viable.
[Mike Ryan] So what do you do, though? If you weren’t on the land, what would you do?
[Trevor Cross] I don’t really know what I would actually do cause I’m not much into fishing, I don’t like doing anything else. And so that’s what I call it, a hobby.
[Mike Ryan] An expensive hobby though, isn’t it?
[Trevor Cross] Yeah but most… a lot of farmers grow because they’re addicted to growing. That’s what they’ve been bred to do. They grow. And they show up nearly every day. So it’s a challenge because you’re challenged against the weather, challenged against people and you become a plumber an accountant, you know, almost doctor, sometimes. So there’s nothing you can’t actually do. A good farmer can do just about anything there is to do.
[Mike Ryan] If somebody was wanting to find out more about what you do, do you actually have a website we could go to and have a look, just to get an idea and appreciation what it’s all about.
[Trevor Cross] No, I would say I keep pretty well under cover but we could actually have a bit of a look at doing something if there’s people interested and actually do something.
[Mike Ryan] Yeah. We must do that. I’m sure you’ll handle the technology as well as my dad.
[Trevor Cross] I have to get someone to help me, yeah.
[Mike Ryan] Trevor, great chatting with you. All the best. Thanks for giving us your time today, and also say thank you to your wife in the background, she’s done a wonderful job.
[Trevor Cross] No worries. Thanks, Michael.
[Malcolm Roberts] The harsh reality is that we, as a nation, will either flourish or decline with our regional centres and with Australian farmers. Our farmers must make a profit to make their livelihoods sustainable. And that, after all, is where we get our food. Our rural and regional communities have unique challenges and need a different set of solutions to ensure fair and equitable access to basic services and to grow viable communities. Thank you for joining me Senator Malcolm Roberts on Our Nation Today.
