Grievance Debate

WATER TRADING

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:14): Today I rise to talk about water—not stormwater or water in relation to metropolitan Adelaide but, rather, what is happening in the Riverland and what the minister has done. I asked a very serious question of the Minister for Water Security in question time today. The minister had obviously read The Weekly Times, as I expected she would, and she chose to answer her question based on a story in The Weekly Times rather than the question that I put to her. I did a little more than just read The Weekly Times story; I actually did some home work to find out exactly what happened.

TheWeekly Times story suggests there was a surge two days before the 7 February announcement. The story is entitled, 'A surge in water purchases'. If anybody wishes to consult the Hansard, they will read the minister's suggestion that there was a spike in water prices. To my understanding, there was no surge or increase water prices before the 7 February announcement, as the minister suggested. She was trying to say that it was because on 5 February she reaffirmed that 32 per cent was as far as the allocation for this water season would go. That may be the case.

The point that I made in the question was that three to four days before her announcement on 7 February—that was one to two days before the announcement about the 32 per cent allocation—there was a notable spike in the amount of water traded. There was no change in price, but a notable spike in the amount of water traded. After the announcement of 7 February, there was a noticeable spike again in both the amount of water traded and the price. A little while later, there was a further spike in the price. We saw the price over that period after 7 February go from between $180 to $200 a megalitre upwards to $380 to $400 a megalitre; that was the price surge. There was a definite surge in the amount of water traded some three to four days (that is, one to two days before her announcement on the allocation) before her announcement on the carryover policy.

Why would this make a difference? Irrigators in South Australia had already been burnt by promises that there would be no increase in the allocation over 16 per cent.

Mr Kenyon interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: Well, this is the way irrigators report it to me, that they were promised. In fact, they said, 'We were urged to make the hard decision in early November.' Before the end of November, allocation was increased to 22 per cent. The impact was that the price of temporary water on the market dropped from over $1,200 a megalitre down to about $200 a megalitre. A week later, the Premier visited the Riverland and announced a further increase to 32 per cent. These announcements have huge impacts on the market.

As I said in the Riverland last week when I was up there, if people bought and sold shares in public companies under those sorts of circumstances, we would see people locked up in gaol. But this government has no understanding and does not care about the impact that such announcements have. I stand by the question I asked today. The minister still has to explain why there was a surge in the volume of water traded three to four days before her 7 February announcement. She said that she was consulting, and I agree that maybe you should consult, but, surely, having consulted, you do not actually then tip off people that you are making an announcement next Monday, Wednesday, or wherever.

Surely, there should be some mechanism where you freeze the market, as they do on the stock exchange, pending an announcement, because this is serious money. Individual irrigators are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just to survive, and the government has been of little help.

To the other questions I asked of the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, when he glibly stands up and says that we cannot make it rain, I invite every member of the house to go to the Riverland and talk to irrigators. They all say that the problem is not the shortage of water—there is water available—it is the price they have to pay for it and finding the money to buy it. My question to the government is: can South Australia afford to lose the permanent plantings in the Murraylands and the Riverland—as I pointed out—that produce economic benefit to this state of over $1 billion a year? Can we afford to lose them? Individual growers are running out of capacity to buy water at over $1,000 a megalitre to keep them alive.

Time expired.