Public Works Committee: South East Flows Restoration Project

Ms DIGANCE (Elder) (11:09): I move:

That the 559^th report of the Public Works Committee, entitled South East Flows Restoration Project, be noted.

The 2006-10 drought in the Murray-Darling Basin negatively affected the ecological health of the Coorong, Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert. The low River Murray flows, and lack of flow into the Coorong, resulted in extreme hypersaline conditions developing in the Coorong South Lagoon and, consequently, the degradation of habitat within this ecosystem.

Since the drought, there has been substantial flow into the Coorong but the ecosystem response has been slow, suggesting long-term impacts. This project aims to address this by building resilience and a healthy Coorong ecosystem, as well as providing some environmental benefits to wetlands in the Upper South-East. It will increase flows by an average of 26.5 gigalitres per year, taking the average annual quantum delivered to the Coorong to 42.7 gigalitres per year.

Specifically, the project includes the construction of a new channel from Blackford Drain to the southern end of the Taratap Drain, and the widening of the existing drains from Taratap Drain to the Tilley Swamp watercourse. The water will then flow into the Tilley Swamp and exit into the Coorong South Lagoon via a Salt Creek outlet. Approximately 13 kilometres of new drains will be constructed, and 80 kilometres of existing drains will be modified and upgraded at a capital cost of approximately $48 million (GST exclusive). The whole project, including land acquisition, consultation, and communication is costed at $60 million.

Consultation has occurred with a wide variety of stakeholders, including landholders, local Aboriginal groups, and the local council. This has led to the realignment of the drain through Tilley Swamp, which will achieve the additional benefit of providing water to the swamp, as well as being able to better manage the release of water into the Coorong South Lagoon.

The Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources is responsible for implementing the project and informed the committee that the project has the general support of the local community. Construction is due to commence in early 2017, with an estimated construction time frame of 75 weeks. The time frame is weather dependent. Given this, and pursuant to section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991, the Public Works Committee reports to parliament that it recommends the proposed public works.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (11:12): As the local member, I am obviously quite interested in this project. Indeed, I am quite supportive of the project. The idea of returning waters to the Coorong from the South-East of the state is one that I have long advocated for and, indeed, since before coming into this place as then an elected landholder member of the South Eastern Water Conservation Drainage Board.

I take issue with some of the report that has been presented to the house today. I refer to the background information, where it refers to the Upper South East Drainage Scheme. It states that it has reduced flooding and resulted in significant agricultural productivity gains. That is a nonsense. The Upper South-East drainage system is certainly designed to reduce flooding, but we have had such dry years since the completion of that drainage scheme that very little water has flowed in the drains that have been constructed. It has had minimal impact, but I think it is a long stretch to suggest that this has reduced flooding and resulted in significant agricultural productivity gains.

The Upper South-East has been screaming out for water in recent years, and I do not think that the drainage scheme has had much impact on agricultural productivity at all. I pointed that out to the committee when I spoke to it during one of its hearings; not that it is of any great import other than the fact that this remains a public record, and I think it is in error. I think I pointed out that the information given to the committee by the department was in error, and I would have liked the committee to have reported that and got the facts right. Some student sometime in the future might come along and take that as fact, and I can assure the house that it is not fact; it is actually an error.

Another chief matter I wish to raise is that on page 11 of the report, under Operating Costs, it is noted that I raised concerns 'regarding the available ongoing budget to manage the operations and maintenance of the project'. I had to leave the hearing because I had another appointment, but I read the transcript and was horrified to learn that, in response to my concerns about the underfunding of the South Eastern Water Conservation and Drainage Board and its inability to adequately maintain the assets for which it is responsible, the department told the committee that, because this project would see the replacement of a number of the drainage board's assets, it would save the drainage board an estimated $900,000 per annum in maintenance costs.

I suspect that is more than the South Eastern Water Conservation and Drainage Board spends on maintenance altogether. This is only going to impact on a tiny fraction of the drainage network in the South-East. I would suggest that the committee was misled by the department—by the agency—in giving that information. I think the committee was misled. I do not believe that you can claim that you are going to save $900,000 per annum in maintenance costs when you have never spent that sort of money on maintenance on the parts of the drainage system that this project is going to impact. That is a nonsense. That is spin of the worst order, and I would suggest that the committee should actually look into that matter.

I ask the committee to call witnesses from the South Eastern Water Conservation and Drainage Board in order to get an exact breakdown of how much is spent on maintenance on those parts of the drains to be upgraded by this project. I will be absolutely amazed if it is anywhere near $900,000; thus, how can you claim that you are going to save $900,000? It is bad enough that this parliament receives spin on a daily basis, but we have a government agency making that outrageous claim—again, this ends up in the committee's report—and I am absolutely certain that it is factually wrong and misleading.

I support the scheme. The committee's report suggests that what became known as the 'millennium drought', which occurred seven or eight years ago, caused the hypersalinity in the southern basin of the Coorong. That is wrong. The southern basin of the Coorong has been hypersaline for probably well in excess of 30 years. It has been getting more and more saline over the last 100 years, with the impact of the drainage works, which I think started in earnest in the Lower South-East in 1869. Certainly, by the 1970s, when the last major drain in the Lower South-East (drain M) was completed—I think, from memory, it was 1972—the fate of the southern basin of the Coorong was certainly sealed.

At the time the Upper South-East drainage scheme was conceived, the southern basin of the Coorong was already around three times as saline as the sea. It was certainly well over 60,000 parts per million of total dissolved salts. Either the information given to the committee as background to the project was in error, or the committee unfortunately misinterpreted some of the information it was given. I think the former was the case, to be quite frank.

Notwithstanding all that, drainage works in the South-East have been of huge benefit to this state. They have opened up highly productive agricultural land that has been producing wealth for this state, as I said, at least since the 1870s. It is the most productive part of the state agriculturally. It has a huge output with meat, grain, fibres—

Mr Treloar interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: It is not open for debate at all.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: And wine.

Mr WILLIAMS: And wine.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thought you would like to mention that most of all.

Mr WILLIAMS: Sorry; my hearing is failing, I can assure you. That has been of great benefit to the state, but I freely admit that the Coorong—and particularly the southern basin of the Coorong—has suffered greatly environmentally because of that drainage in the South-East. I certainly support this project, and hope that not only will we see a stabilisation of the salinity level in the Coorong, but in time I would also like to see the southern lagoon of the Coorong come back to the salinity levels it enjoyed prior to the drainage system being built in the South-East. I conclude my remarks there.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:20): I rise to speak to the South-East Flows Restoration Project and concur with the comments made by the member for MacKillop; we do have to get this right. Issues with the Murray-Darling Basin go back for millennia, but they were certainly highlighted with the massive drought we had about 10 years ago that impacted heavily right throughout the basin. It was very stark at the bottom end of the Murray-Darling Basin, where my electorate of Hammond is situated; we could not even get water to cover acid sulphate soils at the bottoms of Lake Albert and Lake Alexandrina. We had a major crisis.

I note that under this project it will take 18 months, weather permitting, to put back an extra approximately 26.5 gigalitres of water annually into the Coorong. I have worked in the South-East for quite a few years as a shearer, and I noticed back in the eighties, especially, that there was a lot more water about, a lot more run-off, and those drains were highly utilised. In my conversations with the member for MacKillop, even with the wet year we have had this year, a lot of the water has drained away through the ground, dissipated and not ended up in the drainage system because of the previous dry years.

If we keep getting wet seasons that will obviously change, but it certainly is weather dependent, and we need to freshen up the Coorong. We need to keep looking at things in a whole-of-basin approach, and in South Australia as well we need to look at ways to make things better right throughout the river and lakes area and the Coorong. We need to have a serious look at the connector from Lake Albert through to the Coorong so that we can get better flows through there to get some better freshwater outcomes.

I also note there has been recent discussion put out a lot in the media by David Paton about a proposal at Parnka Point, which splits the northern and southern ends of the Coorong with a small weir. When people mention weirs to me, and more weirs in the southern end of the river and lakes and Coorong system, the hair starts to stand up on the back of my neck.

We need to be very careful with some of these proposals going forward. My understanding is that that proposal will get due consideration, with a department investigation of about six months into it, but I think that these things, especially the current proposal to put another obstruction in the system, need to be looked at very carefully. The government needs to remember that we are at least 18 months off from whenever this work starts on the South-East Restoration Flows Project to make sure that we get the outcomes we need without putting another obstruction in the system.

I know that fishermen are up in arms about the proposal, as are others who want to see the right environmental outcome. I will be watching where that goes with interest, but we really need to concentrate on the whole Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the outcomes in getting water back into the system that supposedly will benefit everyone, whether you are an irrigator, whether you want it for the environment or, obviously, what we need for critical human needs.

This has to be managed in an appropriate way so that we do not kill off communities wherever they are in the basin. I have always been a big fan of irrigation. Irrigation that is in place that can have an infrastructure upgrade is a far better way to put water back in the system while still getting irrigated outcomes and food production than simply buying water.

I certainly support this proposal, but let's not start throwing a whole heap of other proposals on top. Let's give this proposal a chance to work and see how much water actually flows. I note the $60 million cost. It is a significant project, with about 13 kilometres of new drain and 80 kilometres of restored drain work. Let's just hope that in future—though it might not be for at least 12 months—our NRM levies will not just be paying for DEWNR staff to sit in offices when that should be coming out of the general revenue account. But, in saying that, I support the project.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (11:26): I would just like to make a contribution to the debate on the Upper South-East drainage scheme and the extension of the system. As the member for MacKillop said, the drains project started in about 1869, and this $48 million project directing water into the southern lagoon of the Coorong has been a work in progress up until today. It will take about 70 weeks to implement, as we have said, weather allowing.

I wanted to touch on the fact that this water going into the Coorong will be unregulated flow. It is not going to be a prescribed watercourse that will make a direct contribution into the Coorong; therefore, this adjustment that has been made to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan comes under what is called an 'unregulated adjustment mechanism'. It is used to offset South Australia's SDLs into the river flow for the health of the lower reaches of the Murray-Darling Basin. But, more importantly, it is about keeping what has now become a very saline basin, particularly in the Lower South-East drainage system into the Coorong, into the Lower Lakes.

This means that, with the country that has been drained and that water put into the system, we are seeing less water going into the drains and less water being replenished into the groundwater system because we are seeing an increased use of water. We are also seeing some drying and some water that continually flows out to sea. My concern about the project is that, in its wisdom, the state government has negotiated with the federal government with respect to the implementation of the basin plan.

As I have said, this adjustment mechanism for the South-East drain extension is a good thing, and a good thing for the Coorong, but it is only one small measure in what I think is a very, very small piece of the big puzzle. Here in South Australia we are known as the delta within the Murray-Darling Basin, but the Lower Lakes and the Coorong really are the telltale of the delta within the basin.

What it is showing us is a further increase in salinity. We are seeing salinity slugs move around a lot of the basin area, and particularly the southern end of the Coorong and, to a larger degree, the northern end of the Coorong is now seeing a significant increase in salinity. I know the Coorong is highly renowned for the ruppia grass which is a bit of a telltale as to the health of the Coorong.

Many proposals have been put up, and I want to strongly advocate to the state government that there are proposals that have been put on the table that are continually filed in the bottom drawer and left there. Those proposals are about the diversity of putting environmental water into both the southern lagoon and the northern lagoon of the Coorong.

This South-East drainage project will put water into the southern lagoon of the Coorong, but we cannot forget about the northern lagoon. There is a very simple solution, and it is not just this $48 million project. It is a project of about $38 million to connect Lake Albert with the northern lagoon of the Coorong that is needed. To do that requires a regulated connection which will allow flow from Lake Alexandrina into Lake Albert, through Lake Albert into the Coorong and then on, through its path, out to the Murray Mouth.

We all know that the Murray Mouth is the telltale. When the Murray Mouth silts up, we have issues, and that usually means we have low flow, so then we enact water-sharing arrangements between all the basin states. For too long, the state government has ignored some of the great environmental projects that need to be looked at and seriously considered, and not just with a box-ticking exercise.

We continually hear in South Australia that these projects are not cost-effective and not good value for money. I ask minister Hunter: what is good value for a good environmental outcome? How much money do we have to spend to keep our environment in a working, sustainable condition? At the moment, we continually hear from our current water minister who has little interest, other than a political interest, in the River Murray. My concern is we are not looking at some of the other solutions that would be another piece in these puzzles.

Those solutions include the connection from Lake Albert to the Coorong and looking at automating some of the barrage doors so that we reduce the intrusion of salt water into those Lower Lakes. It is about keeping the Murray Mouth open. It is about looking at ideas and proposals. It is about considering a groyne at the Murray Mouth and considering how we can use nature's energy to keep the Murray Mouth open rather than putting an expensive dredge there that costs millions of taxpayers' dollars for the simple reason that it is a visual solution. There are many natural solutions that would be a piece of the jigsaw puzzle for the South-East drains.

I do support the scheme, but it is part of the project and just part of the puzzle when it comes to environmental works and measures below Lock 1 in South Australia. Today, this project is probably one of the first environmental works and measures that is going to help the lower reaches of the Murray. We have seen nothing else happen. There have been a few trees planted below Lock 1, and many of them have died. We have not seen any implementation of environmental works and measures that will have lasting benefits to the environment.

More importantly, this is about being responsible citizens for our environment. It is about being responsible when negotiating with the other three basin states when we have shortages of water because of drought. When we go to them and ask for a bigger share of the pie, their reply is going to be, 'What can you demonstrate that you have done with regard to environmental works and measures in South Australia, particularly below Lock 1?'

We have seen the environmental works and measures around every lock in South Australia. At Lock 6, we have Chowilla; at Lock 5, we have the Pike; at Lock 4, we have Katarapko; at Lock 3; we have Banrock; and at Lock 2 we have small wetlands. They are environmental works that are of benefit. They are really just gold plating the existing infrastructure. A lot of rock walls and earthen banks have done the job. Both the federal and state governments, in their wisdom, have gold plated those pieces of infrastructure. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars ensuring that those pieces of infrastructure are renewed and gold plated.

However, we are not seeing anything happen below Lock 1. I feel that these are missed opportunities, particularly with the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It is crucial that South Australia stands up and understands that we have to be good and responsible citizens and environmental custodians. At the moment, this current state government is using the Murray as a political linchpin. It is not there for the long-term sustainability of the Murray.

I can assure members that on this side of the house we work for the benefit of the entire river system. We have advocated for good water flows for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and its initial 2,750 gigalitres by 2019, and then we will look at the 450 gigalitres of up water by 2024. We continually see the Premier and the water minister putting the cart before the horse. They want the 450 gigalitres now. They do not want to deal with what 2,750 by 2019 means to the basin and then address what the 450 means. Again, 450 is on the table.

It is about better managing our river system. The extension of the South-East drainage scheme and drains going into the southern lagoon at the Coorong is one of a very small piece in a larger picture. I am calling on the state government to look at the bigger picture and be responsible environmental custodians instead of using this river, these flood plains, these lakes, as political wedges. Every time we see the Premier looking for an advantage within the river system, he turns it into a political football. We are not seeing any real outcome when it comes to being responsible so that when we have our dry and people ask us what we have achieved we can lay it on the table. At the moment, our credentials are zero. The cupboard is bare of any achievements below Lock 1.

I support the extension of the Upper South-East drainage scheme; $48 million is a lot of money. It is hard to put a cost-benefit analysis on the environment. The sustainability of the environment is what we have to put that equation on. At the moment, the government has left me wanting.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:37): This was an interesting hearing. I have listened again with interest this morning to the views of my colleagues. I am particularly concerned about some of the comments that the house heard from the member for MacKillop, who seriously knows what is going on down there. I am sure the Presiding Member is well aware of it as well, but I will raise those matters at the Public Works Committee. It may well be that we have the opportunity to recall or call more witnesses to obtain a little bit more information.

It is a critical part of the agricultural and environmental sectors of South Australia down there, and it needs to be put right and it needs far more investment. Listening to the member for Chaffey about what has not occurred below Lock 1 is very important as well. Having said that, I indicate that the opposition supports the report.

Ms DIGANCE (Elder) (11:38): I would like to thank all those who have contributed to the debate this morning: the members for Hammond, Chaffey and Finniss. In particular, I would like to thank the member for MacKillop for the issues he raised and highlighted and the challenge he has mounted with facts presented by the department. As Presiding Member, I certainly will be investigating the issues he has raised today. With that, I recommend that the report be noted.

Motion carried.