Advertisement

Barnaby Joyce: water theft allegations 'an issue overwhelmingly for NSW'

Lake Hume in the Murray-Darling basin during drought in 2009.
Lake Hume in the Murray-Darling basin during drought in 2009. It is alleged that billions of litres of water allocated for environmental flows have been being taken by irrigators. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

Barnaby Joyce has said allegations of water theft are “overwhelmingly” an issue for New South Wales and anyone who has broken the law will be dealt with.

In his first response to allegations raised on Four Corners on Monday night, the federal water minister and deputy prime minister likened water thieves to cattle and sheep rustlers but stressed there were only allegations of water theft at this stage.

“Just like there are cattle thieves, just like there are sheep thieves, there are car thieves, there are people who break into your house, there are people who steal water,” he said.

“And if you break the law – and that is an allegation, not a fact, it’s an allegation – if you break the law, then you are going to be dealt with in the same process as any other.”

An intergovernmental war has erupted since ABC’s Four Corners program reported that billions of litres of water bought by taxpayers to return to the environment under the Murray-Darling basin plan were being allegedly pumped out by some irrigators for cotton growing in northern NSW.

Four Corners also revealed recordings of the NSW deputy director general of the NSW department of primary industries, Gavin Hanlon, allegedly offering to share internal “debranded” government information with a group of irrigators via a Dropbox account.

Guardian Australia has requested a response from Hanlon to the allegations but has received no comment. Both Joyce and the NSW water minister, Niall Blair, said Hanlon had self-referred to the NSW independent commission against corruption to clear up the matter.

There may be five inquiries into the allegations, given calls for investigations by the Icac, a NSW government-initiated independent inquiry, the commonwealth auditor general, a judicial inquiry and a Senate inquiry.

Joyce said the issue of water theft from the Barwon Darling system in northern NSW – a critical link in the Murray-Darling river system – was “an issue overwhelmingly for NSW”. He said once investigations were complete, the issue would be on the agenda at the next water ministers’ meeting.

“The process is now being investigated by a person outside government, who is independent of government, and even after that, they’ll come back and I’ll make sure that comes back to our ministerial meeting and if all the ministers there, if they’re not happy with the process, then we can have the discussion there,” Joyce said.

But Tony Burke, Labor’s spokesman on water, said the whole concept of the Murray Darling Basin plan, which takes in the four states along the length of the river system, was that it was not a state issue.

“The problem for a hundred years was that it was treated like a state issue,” he said.

Burke, who was water minister when the plan was set up in 2012-13, said Joyce needed to commit to a judicial inquiry because a Senate inquiry could not access state bureaucracies and the NSW Icac could not access federal bureaucracies.

Joyce’s assistant water minister and South Australian senator, Anne Ruston, described the allegations as “hideous” and also urged a closer look at compliance.

“I certainly think that it’s a serious wake-up call that if somebody is stealing water and that was one of the allegations made last night, that a billion litres at a time of water was being taken out of the Barwon section of the Darling, without the necessary permits or approvals to do so,” Ruston told the ABC on Tuesday night.

“I mean that is a pretty serious allegation and we need to find out whether it was true and if it is true then it does beg the question of greater compliance and monitoring to make sure it doesn’t happen again. They are pretty hideous allegations that were made last night.”

On Wednesday, the South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, called for commonwealth oversight of all compliance over the length of the Murray-Darling river system and a federal judicial review into allegations of water theft in NSW.

Such a move would radically alter the arrangements for water management in Australia. Currently state governments are responsible for making sure water licence rules are enforced across Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

“I think there needs to be a national system of oversight of the enforcement and regulation of the implementation of the Murray Darling Basin plan,” Weatherill said.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be the management of every element of it but certainly there needs to be some species of national oversight of the implementation of the plan.

“What we are asking the upstream states to do is to put back water in that they inappropriately took.”

Weatherill accused upstream states of ripping 5,000 gigalitres of water out of the Murray-Darling system and he wants a judicial commission into the allegations raised on Four Corners.

Weatherill said South Australia did not trust NSW to investigate its own practices and he accused NSW of actively trying to undermine the Murray-Darling basin agreement.

“Not only aren’t they cooperating, they are seeking to actively undermine the agreement they entered into,” Weatherill said.

“Knowing they couldn’t win the public fight – the community wanted us to save this river and to privilege the environment over commercial interests – they’ve then decided plan B is to essentially undermine the [agreement] by not putting the water back.”

Blair denied that the NSW government had downgraded water compliance officers, who ensure irrigators abide by their licences. He said compliance officers were “on the ground every day”.

Asked on ABC whether he was aware of allegations that some cotton producers had channelled 1bn litres of water “external to their licences”, Blair said “of course”.

“Because that’s why investigations have been carried out and in some cases are continuing to be carried out in relation to those claims,” he said.

“I’m not going to comment on where each and every investigation is up to, the fact that we have investigations into those allegations is one thing but as minister I want to make sure that the compliance system we have and the people that surround that are beyond any sort of criticism.”