Parliamentary Committees

NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: UPPER SOUTH EAST DRYLAND SALINITY AND FLOOD MANAGEMENT ACT REPORT 2012-13

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (11:03): I move:

That the 87th report of the Natural Resources Committee, entitled Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Act 2002 Report July 2012-June 2013, be noted.

Members of this house will be aware that the bill to extend the life of the Upper South-East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Act (otherwise known as the USE Act) was defeated in parliament in late 2012. Consequently, the act has expired. Management of the drainage and flood mitigation infrastructure and associated programs has devolved into the South Eastern Water Conservation and Drainage Board under the South Eastern Water Conservation and Drainage Act, with the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources retaining an oversight role.

Another bill, the South East Drainage System Operation and Management Bill (SEDSOM Bill) was introduced into parliament in October 2012. This bill would have repealed the South Eastern Water Conservation and Drainage Bill and enabled future infrastructure projects, including the South East Flows Restoration project. However, the SEDSOM Bill has yet to be passed by parliament. The South East Flows Restoration project includes the controversial drain connecting the Lower South-East scheme to the Upper South-East scheme to restore natural flows to the Coorong. The drain is opposed by neighbouring landowners, who believe it will exacerbate their problems of highly saline and alkaline water entering wetlands.

The member for Mount Gambier, who is also a member of the Natural Resources Committee, proposed amendments to the SEDSOM Bill in late 2012 to enable a staged development of the restoration project. These amendments were supported by the house, but the bill itself was defeated, mainly due to the concerns about the proposed route of the new drain. What the defeat of the USE extension bill means for the SEDSOM Bill is unclear at this present time, as is the future of the new drain proposed under the restoration project.

DEWNR ceased providing quarterly reports to the Natural Resources Committee at the end of 2012 but stated it would continue to provide informal briefings as and when required. Operation and maintenance of the existing drains and floodways, will be continued by the drainage board. Provisions in the USE Act relating to compensation for landholders affected by the construction of the drains and floodways continue until all claims are settled.

In the meantime, the committee has maintained its watching brief over the program, and I am pleased to inform members of the House of Assembly that, following significant rainfall this winter, fresh water was released into the West Avenue Watercourse, filling the Parrakie Wetlands. I do qualify this news with a caution that it is the first significant watering event for the wetlands in five years and, without regular wetting events in future, the ecology of the wetlands will be compromised.

When I presented the USE Act Annual Report to the house last year, I said the committee had formed the view that it was too early to decide whether the Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Program was a success. Now that a successful watering event has finally been possible for the West Avenue wetlands, I believe there may yet be hope for the program and it is on a positive note that I note this report of the Natural Resources Committee on the Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Act.

I would like to acknowledge the valuable contribution of the committee members during the year. The member for Frome, the member for Torrens, the member for Little Para, the member for Mount Gambier, the member for Stuart, the Hon. Robert Brokenshire MLC, the Hon. John Dawkins MLC, the Hon. Russell Wortley MLC and the Hon. Gerry Kandelaars MLC have all worked together and I look forward to the continuation of this spirit for the coming year. I would finally like to thank the members of the parliamentary staff for their assistance.

There has been some discussion behind the scenes, because this is such a complicated and difficult area, and the Hon. Robert Brokenshire, I am sure, will not mind me quoting his suggestion that, in their retirement, the members for Giles and Torrens perhaps become commissioners in this area to overlook the future of the drains in the Upper South-East. I commend this report to the house.

Mr PEGLER (Mount Gambier) (11:07): I rise to speak on this excellent report. As most members should be aware, the South-East is the food bowl of South Australia, particularly with our dairy and potato crops, beef, lamb and wool and, of course, our immense forest industry.

The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell interjecting:

Mr PEGLER: None of these industries—including tourism—would have been possible without the drainage that the South-East has had and that has been going since about the 1860s. The unfortunate part about the whole drainage scheme is that there is no way that either the government of today or the opposition have come up with a future management plan and a future investment plan for the whole of the South-East as far as drainage is concerned.

We have a situation where the government is suing landowners for the non-payment of levies and then we also have a situation where landowners are suing the government for some of the drains that have actually flooded them out. There is a great problem there. We also see where some of the drains have been built and, instead of taking fresh water into some of the wetlands we have, they have actually taken salt water into those wetlands and completely ruined the wetlands that have been very good in past times.

There was also a proposal from the government to take good water from the Lower South-East up into the Coorong. I was completely against that and, as far as I am concerned, the good water in the South-East should be first of all used to recharge our very good aquifers, then excess water can go out to sea or into the Coorong. However, regarding upper South-East dryland salinity, where they have drained the salt water from those lands into the Coorong has been a great initiative and it has restored a lot of valuable agricultural land, and that land is much more productive today than it has been in the past.

Many drains need a lot of work right throughout the South-East, and I have not been able to see any plans on how those drains will be fixed. Of course, there are about 1,200 bridges right throughout the South-East that all need work and on some of those bridges you can no longer take some of the trucks that we have. We have roads that those trucks cannot drive down to cart the produce off those farms, so it is just a complete shemozzle as far as I am concerned.

The recommendation from the report is that a full inquiry be held into the whole of the South-East drainage scheme, including the Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Scheme. That inquiry should have an assessment of whether the environmental impact statement for each scheme accurately envisaged final schemes as constructed and their impacts both positive and negative; a benefit/cost analysis of the schemes taking into consideration total expenditure and total estimated benefits, focussing on agricultural production; an assessment of long-term maintenance costs of the schemes and whether it is likely there is sufficient funding to provide for this maintenance via the current levy provisions and other funding sources that may be available from state and federal governments

The inquiry should have an assessment of whether the compensation program for the Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Scheme has been successful, given reported multiple legal cases instigated both by landowners and the state government; an assessment of whether the environmental program for the Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Scheme has been successful in offsetting the loss of the original wetland ecosystems caused by the implementation of the scheme; an assessment of whether the estimated additional volume of water proposed for the Coorong through the diversion of water from the Lower South-East warrants the completion of the South East Flows Restoration Project, currently on hold due to the lack of support to enabling legislation in the South Australian parliament for which 50 per cent of the funding had been promised by the commonwealth contingent on matching funding from the state government; and recommendations for the state government for future action, including possible funding mechanisms for maintenance and further infrastructure, new legislation and governance arrangements for ongoing management, maintenance, new works and compensation to landholders.

As far as I am concerned, we need a full analysis of the whole of the South-East drainage scheme to ascertain how effective it has been, where these mistakes have been made and how we can fix those mistakes. We have to do a forward budget on what it is going to cost both to maintain and improve the whole scheme right throughout the South-East and also investigate how we can put some of that good water back into our aquifer, rather than having it wasted going out to sea.

As far as I am concerned, then there should be a coinvestment by the government and landholders in the South-East. I think all of the South-East benefits from this scheme but we must also bear in mind that the whole of the state of South Australia benefits so greatly from the South-East. A classic example is that you would never have had the Adelaide Oval if you could not have sold the forests, so as far as I am concerned the state should make some contribution and the people of the South-East should make a coinvestment contribution.

I will be pushing for that inquiry very strongly. I believe that inquiry should be independent of government so that somebody can look at the whole thing. It is not about apportioning blame; it is about finding solutions. I hope that the parliaments in the future can support having an inquiry of that type done.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:14): I rise to speak to the Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Act 2002 Report, July 2012-June 2013. As has been put by members, there has been a long history of drains in the South-East, and there are conflicting points of view on how well they have operated and, especially in latter years, on how well they have been managed. Most of that has been in regard to some of the newer drains that have been either proposed or put in and the way that the funds to manage the construction and maintenance of those drains are levied against landholders.

The history of drains in the South-East has certainly opened up thousands of hectares of land to agricultural production, but, as I said, there are some different points of view on whether some specific drains should have been where they were. In an historical context, I want to speak about Murray McCourt and what he did near Robe with the Woakwine Cutting. Some of the history of the Woakwine Cutting that opened up a lot of the McCourt country down there involved the South Eastern Water Conservation Drainage Board, which drew up plans for the proposed channel, but they were never adopted. I note that Mr McCourt decided to take a calculated risk to build an almost perpendicular cutting—and it is quite a cutting to see if you are ever in that region.

Prior to this, a drainage channel of this depth had never been attempted in Australia, so there could have been a lot of problems in the construction. Murray and a workman did this job 24 hours a day. They used a new, at the time, Caterpillar D7 crawler tractor, complete with a double drum winch and a bulldozer blade; a second-hand seven-tonne Le Tourneau carryall scraper of 11-yard heat capacity, which was cable operated; and a second-hand Le Tourneau drawn ripper, which was cable operated and weighed about 10 tonnes.

The work started way back in May 1957, and the material was carried from the cutting by the tractor-drawn carryall scraper. They disposed of the soil in a deep gully not far from the cutting, and then some of the soil was dumped along the total length of the drain on the southern side. Some small charges of gelignite were used to build some of this. The completion of the cutting—this mammoth operation—was not completed until May 1960, which was two weeks under the target of three years, so it was very visionary for this farmer and his staff to take this on. At this time, there was a considerable build-up of water in a swamp and it was decided to remove the bar that was keeping it out and let it flow through to the lake.

It was quite a massive construction, and here are some vital statistics in regard to the Woakwine Cutting: it is one kilometre long; it is only three metres wide at the bottom; at the top, it is 36.57 metres wide; and, at the deepest point, it is 28.34 metres. The D7 did 5,000 hours in completing this task and removed over 361,000 cubic yards of material. The total length of the channel was approximately eight kilometres. That was just one channel that was dug to drain the South-East. It is noted that around Salt Creek Tom Brinkworth did some work not that many years ago with some big scrapers opening up channels there.

A lot of the drains go back many decades in the South-East. Certainly, you note that in the dry times there is not much water at all in them, but I think they have assisted with the growth of the South-East as a productive area and certainly with the financial viability of making things work because it can get quite a bit wetter than where I am at Coomandook in the mid to lower South-East. In regards to the recommendations, I note that the lead recommendation is:

The Natural Resources Committee recommends that the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation write to the Federal Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment requesting that the Productivity Commission undertake an inquiry into the South East Drainage and Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management schemes.

The inquiry should work on issues surrounding an environmental impact statement for each scheme to see how they were constructed and to see what impacts these schemes had, both positive and negative, and it should also include 'a benefit/cost analysis of the schemes taking into consideration total expenditure and total estimated benefits'. I have also just recently mentioned in my contribution about the benefits for agricultural production.

There are issues around maintenance of the scheme, and also issues to deal with in regard to a compensation program with the schemes, and assessment of whether the environmental program has been successful in offsetting the loss of some of the original wetland ecosystems that was caused by the implementation on the scheme. I note what the member for Mount Gambier said about the water from the Lower South-East that may be channelled through to the Coorong, and I note that recommendation 6 is:

An assessment of whether the estimated additional volume of water proposed for the Coorong through the diversion of water from the Lower South East warrants the completion of the South East Flows Restoration Project, currently on hold due to lack of support for enabling legislation in the South Australian Parliament for which 50% funding had been promised by the Commonwealth contingent on matching funding by the State Government;

I think that is something that certainly needs to be investigated. The health of the Coorong—and this reflects back on the River Murray—is uppermost in my mind. I do note the comments by the member for Mount Gambier, who is obviously concerned about the Lower South-East, that their groundwater does not suffer as a result and that his area, and that of the member for MacKillop, does not suffer as a result if this scheme to transfer these waters into the Coorong goes ahead.

Certainly, as the member in this house who represents the lower reaches of the River Murray, I would certainly want a full investigation into what could be the benefits of this water reaching the Coorong. We only have to witness what happened in the recent drought on how much salinity was not only in the River Murray and the lakes (Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert, which is still suffering from high salinity loads), but also the high saline content of the southern and northern lagoons in the Coorong. I also note the last recommendation is that the state government take further action:

...including possible funding mechanisms for maintenance and further infrastructure, new legislation and governance arrangements for ongoing management, maintenance, new works and compensation to landholders.

I think that will be one of the bigger things for parliament to work through. As I said earlier in my contribution, there are mixed feelings about some of these drains, especially about some of the newer ones and who will pay for the scheme. I know that there were land access issues with getting on to people's property and that kind of thing, and whether people thought that some of these newer drains were going to be a benefit. So, I think there has to be a lot of work and a lot of full consultation with whoever is in power in this place to make sure that we get the right outcome as far as the Upper South-East drainage scheme is concerned.

Motion carried.