Question Time

WATER TRADING

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:15): My question is to the Premier. When he made his statement to the house on 8 September regarding his proposed High Court challenge, was the Premier aware that the upper house of the Victorian parliament had already passed legislation, on 3 September 2009, to remove the 10 per cent non-water user limit?

The Hon. M.D. RANN (Ramsay—Premier, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change) (14:15): What I said on that day (if every member here reads the Hansard carefully) is that what we have been doing is basically saying there is a whole series of targets that we want to achieve, and I acknowledged that in fact the Victorians had promised to have that totally removed by the end of October. It has to get through both houses of parliament and then be proclaimed. The Victorians would not have taken this action unless we had not threatened the case; that is the whole point.

Earlier on, you will be aware, we had Victorians who were adamant that that would not happen. They outlined their timetable. Their timetable did not include removing it this year. It is because we had them in our sights for a High Court challenge and because they know what the likely outcome of such a challenge will be that the Victorians have been in retreat.

I would have thought that every single member of this parliament on both sides would be saying that it is vitally important to ensure that Victoria continues to retreat, because there is a whole series of issues. There is the 10 per cent cap, there is the 4 per cent cap and, of course, there is a whole range of issues relating to riparian rights and issues that in fact go back to the very founding of Federation, in which we believe this state has had its legal rights removed by those upstream who take out 93 per cent of the water that is extracted. So, you just have to see this.

We are waiting for that cap to be removed by proclamation. We are waiting for the Victorian government to do so. We are waiting for the cap to be removed. It has not been removed yet. We are waiting for the 4 per cent and the 10 per cent to be removed, and then I will be announcing other matters in this parliament relating to South Australia's constitutional riparian rights.