Bills

Landscape South Australia (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 2 December 2020.)

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (12:14): I rise to support this important amendment bill from the Minister for Environment and Water. It is a fairly small piece of legislation, but it is actually quite important. The Landscape South Australia Act 2019 commenced on 1 July 2020. I will come back to that in a moment, but what this is essentially about is trying to correct a subsequently identified potential anomaly in that act that may limit the ability to adapt the period in which compliance action can be taken for any unauthorised or unlawful use of water.

Of course, this has a direct impact upon compliance within the River Murray prescribed watercourse, which is incredibly important. The main change will be to provide clarity of interpretation regarding an accounting period for the purposes of declaring a penalty or a charge for unauthorised or unlawful water use. In a nutshell, that is what this is really about, but why is it so important? It is incredibly important that we have the right systems in place so that we can enforce compliance with regard to the taking of water. The taking of water is an incredibly important issue and it comes in many different forms.

In enormous parts of my electorate of Stuart water is like gold. It is probably fair to say it is more valuable than gold. All water in outback South Australia that falls from the sky and is then captured on the land, whether in a riparian context or in dams or however else, and water that comes from under the ground is critical to everything that happens, whether from an environmental perspective or from a pastoral business perspective or from a household residential perspective of needing water in your rainwater tanks because that is all you have. It is incredibly important.

Coming back to the River Murray, we know through very, very hard experience in the first 10 years of this millennium that the River Murray can run dry. It is not an exaggeration. There is an enormous body of work connected to how and why that happens. In fact, there are a wide range of opinions with regard to the taking of water from the Murray. It seems there is more difference of opinion between states than within states. We need to have the right systems in place so that we can enforce compliance, so we need to address this very important issue.

Up until one election ago, the electorate of Stuart included part of the Riverland. Morgan, Blanchetown, Cadell and Murbko were in the electorate of Stuart. They were moved from Stuart to Chaffey, which certainly at one level makes perfect sense, but no member ever likes a boundary change that takes people and country out of their electorates, so that was sad from my perspective. I certainly understood why that made sense to the Electoral Commission. I certainly understood why the member for Chaffey was very pleased to be able to represent the good people of Morgan, Blanchetown, Cadell, Murbko and that area.

But what that gave me for eight years was a terrific insight into the affairs of the Riverland. I am not an expert like the member for Chaffey—I have never been a grower—but dealing with, supporting, learning from and representing people in that part of the world was an outstanding opportunity for me to learn far more than I had ever known before about the River Murray and the importance of having these systems in place.

The Minister for Environment and Water is also doing some work in regard to how we should be treating people who steal water. It might seem to the average person that taking too much water out of the River Murray may not be that big a deal perhaps, but that is absolutely incorrect. Taking too much water out of the River Murray, or from other sources by the way, is in my opinion and in our government's opinion a serious crime. It is not a crime to the extent of some other crimes, but in a commercial and environmental context it is a very serious crime to be stealing water from the River Murray.

The reason why we have allocations and entitlements is so that we can try to have as fair a system as possible. When people try to cheat the system that is as fair as possible, they are cheating the environment, they are cheating other growers and they are cheating water consumers in Adelaide and other parts of our state. It is actually an extremely important issue.

We have all heard the expression that one day on planet Earth water may well be far more valuable than any other precious mineral or stone or anything else we can imagine. I do not think we are too close to that, but what keeps us away from that sort of situation is good management and responsible use of water. I have to say that irrigators in South Australia are the most responsible water users of any irrigators anywhere in the nation. They are all using closed systems and the very best technology available that growers can afford. We have long ditched the use of open canals from the river.

We are doing everything we can as an industry, as a government, as successive governments in South Australia to try to make this work so that there is enough water to go around. If people steal water, it takes us directly down the path of not having enough water to go around and when we do not have enough water to go around, that is when water will become much more expensive, that is when all the produce directly related to irrigation becomes much more expensive, and at the extreme, that is when we head down to the futuristic view of water maybe being the most precious commodity we have.

It is already the most necessary commodity we have and always has been. Water is the most necessary and the most vital commodity we have. But it is the sensible management of that water that means it is not overly expensive. In fact, it is a pleasure again to commend the Minister for Energy and Water for his leadership, along with the Treasurer and our government more broadly, in regard to bringing down the cost of water for households and businesses in South Australia.

We have made an enormous effort on behalf of South Australians to reduce the cost of living and the pressures that go with that by reducing NRM levies, reducing land tax, reducing electricity costs and reducing water costs, which is very important. We do not want that to go in the other direction because people are stealing water.

When I talk about stealing water, I am not talking about just making a mistake, going over an allocation just a little bit or some genuine error. I am talking at the extreme—about people who deliberately and knowingly take massive amounts of water far in excess of their fair and legal entitlement. In some cases, I know they are doing so deliberately because the risk of being caught and the penalties associated with being caught do not outweigh the benefits of taking that water, using that water, putting it to commercial use and making money from that. We are very focused on addressing that and one of the important but small ways we are doing it is with this bill, so it is incredibly important.

Let me just say that while the thrust of this is about the River Murray—and we think immediately of enormous volumes of water being taken from the river for irrigation and in South Australia far more responsibly than in any other state in the Murray-Darling Basin—it is not only about the River Murray.

We have pipelines from the River Murray—and people would mostly be familiar with the Morgan to Whyalla pipeline—but we also have pipelines that take River Murray water much further into Eyre Peninsula. The three Upper Spencer Gulf cities of Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Whyalla are all run on River Murray water, so negatively impacting the supply of water in the Murray by stealing it out of the Murray is a much broader statewide issue than people might immediately think.

It also has very clear impacts upon the environment, not only the environment within and along the River Murray corridor but right down to the Lower Lakes and the fact that unfortunately for a very long time now, successive governments have been dredging the Murray Mouth, taking sand out of the Murray Mouth, so that it does not build up and water can continue to flow out to sea, as is necessary.

I know that every member of this house would like to see higher flows in the River Murray going out to sea. There is an incredibly complex set of circumstances with regard to the interaction between the states that contributes to that. Rainfall, of course, contributes to that, and the amount of water taken out of the Murray in each of those states contributes to that as well.

Moving on to other parts of the electorate of Stuart and how this might impact us, I will give a short list of examples of the ways different communities get their water. I have mentioned the Upper Spencer Gulf cities on the pipeline. For example, in Wilmington where I live, we have a disused former copper mine that was abandoned because underground water kept flooding it, and with older technology they just could not keep the water out.

That was a shame for the owner-operators of that copper mine, but it has worked out incredibly well for Wilmington because the underground aquifer from the closed copper mine flooded by underground water is now the Wilmington town supply, piped and pumped from about 10 kilometres away to a tank on the side of a hill above Wilmington and then gravity fed back into the houses.

The town of Melrose gets underground water pumped from an underground aquifer not too far out of town, out toward the Willochra Plain, probably the edge of the Willochra Plain would be a fair way to describe it. Just outside the electorate of Stuart, but only by a few kilometres, the town of Quorn also has underground water. To use these three examples, at Wilmington we are very lucky, as we have very good quality water. Those other two towns, Melrose and Quorn, do not have good quality water, so the people in those towns overwhelmingly use rainwater for human consumption and use the poor quality water supplied to them by SA Water for other purposes.

How does this link into the bill that we are talking about? Very recently, there was a proposal, which unfortunately for those three communities did not get up (certainly not this time, but it might in the future), whereby ESCOSA considered to build a pipeline extension from the River Murray pipeline that would run through and to those three towns so that they would get River Murray water instead of the current sources.

Wilmington would have liked it, but it was not that big a deal because the water there is okay, but it would have been a massive improvement for Quorn and Melrose. Hopefully, at another time the Essential Services Commission will determine that spending money on that and sharing the cost across all water users is a worthwhile venture, but it can only happen if there is enough water in the Murray. You cannot extend the pipeline network further into new places in the state so that those communities get the benefit of higher quality water if you do not have water in the river, and we will not have it in the river if the water is stolen out of the river. So it is very important that we consider all the different types of impacts of this legislation.

This fits into the landscape act, as I mentioned before. The Minister for Environment and Water has done a fantastic job, as have all the people working in this space throughout the state, to transition from what were natural resources management boards to what are now landscape boards. There were some boundary changes and some personnel changes. Some of the focus and priorities of the previous NRM boards remained, and some very positive new focus areas and priorities are coming into the work of the landscape boards.

I can tell you that, in the electorate of Stuart, that change has been received very warmly. People in the electorate of Stuart are very pleased, on balance—never is everybody completely satisfied—to have the more practical and broader approach that comes with the landscape act. People are pleased to have the opportunity to apply for small local community grants to do important environmental work in their areas.

Things that previously may not have made it to the top of the priority list, quite understandably for an NRM board, now can actually receive some direct funding from government through the landscape act and its associated systems because there is money for small groups to do their projects in their areas, the types of things that previous NRM boards would very much have liked to do but just did not quite have the capacity to do.

I would also like to acknowledge not just people working in the Murray-Darling Basin part of our state but people all around our state working professionally and—most importantly with regard to this acknowledgment—on a volunteer basis on environmental matters. The electorate of Stuart runs in the southern end from Truro and Kapunda to the northern end from Oodnadatta to Innamincka, and along the Northern Territory border, the Queensland border and the New South Wales border to above the electorate of Chaffey, and in every single corner of our electorate there are volunteers working with previous NRM boards and now landscape boards to try to do positive environmental work and make improvements in their home patches.

From essentially the top of the Adelaide Hills—the bottom of my electorate, that sliver of the Barossa Valley—all the way up to the South Australian Arid Lands boundary in the Far North of the state, it is tremendous to see people having the opportunity and the desire and willingness to put their effort, skill, capacity, time and own machinery to use for these types of things. There is an enormous number of engagements with Aboriginal communities as well, which is very important.

In the brief amount of time I have left I would like to talk about one of the great challenges with hands-on environmental work, which is the necessary distinction, in people's minds, between improving the environment and protecting the environment. At one level they are the same thing, but sometimes you do have to make a distinction. With regard to removing feral animals and weeds, for example, you are trying to recover from backward steps that have been imposed upon the environment.

In other ways, with regard to the important work in the Murray around Chowilla, for example, it is a combination of both: trying to do some recovery work and also actually trying to, in some cases, put in overflow channels that provide better natural watering of backwaters than has ever been available before outside of flood areas. It is very important work.

I commend this short but important bill. I believe that stealing water from the Murray or from anywhere else is a scourge. People need to have water, and anybody who steals it is taking it away from other people who need it and deserve it and/or taking it away from very important environmental purposes for which this water must also always be made available.

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:34): I rise to indicate that I am the lead speaker on this side of the chamber and also that we support this piece of legislation. It is in itself a very brief piece of legislation and does a sensible job of creating the capacity to make regulations in order to put beyond doubt the capacity of the government to regulate the measuring of water and therefore avoid the chance of water theft.

I would like, though, in the time that I have to put some context to why this is such an important albeit brief piece of legislation. The context is of course much greater than simply the question of whether some irrigators have been seeking to take advantage of the annual measurement of water rather than the quarterly measurement. The context is that we have a Murray-Darling Basin that is in a state of continual crisis, not always in the supply water, depending on how the rains are going, but always in the state of governance of the Murray and of the Murray-Darling Basin.

We have the Murray-Darling Basin Plan that we on this side of parliament support, as I know the government do on their side. It is a plan that is at best marginally adequate in the amount of water that has been allocated for the environment and unfortunately is not being honoured in its fullness in the delivery of the water that has been allocated. For that reason, we in South Australia can afford to lose not one drop of the water that comes over the border through any means of over or misallocation, as is dealt with in this piece of legislation.

When the Minister for Energy and Mining was talking about the risk of theft and the importance of protecting our water supplies, my mind kept turning to the way in which the other states are routinely getting away with exactly that behaviour. While this piece of legislation unfortunately will not be able to fully address that, that is nonetheless the context for the importance of this legislation.

We have other states that have conspired to ensure that the allocation that was agreed to in the plan was, as I say, barely adequate, and that is being generous. More recently, they have conspired to ensure that the 450-gigalitre allocation, which had been established for the health of the South Australian end of the Murray, would effectively not be delivered in full and on time. That 450 gigalitres is due in just a few short years, in 2024, and almost certainly will not be delivered.

We have a government in Canberra that has also gone out of its way to put barriers in the way of South Australia achieving a healthy River Murray and of the Murray-Darling Basin being a healthy system. Those barriers have taken the form of Barnaby Joyce when he was water minister—it is hard to credit that he was ever given such an important role—putting a cap on the amount of water that could be voluntarily bought back in order to have that allocation go to the environment. He put on a cap of 1,500 gigalitres.

Then subsequently this current minister said that, even though there is a couple of hundred gigalitres left within that cap, there will not be any of that happening. The current minister has looked at the 450 gigalitres and said, 'Well, none of that is going to happen through on-farm water efficiency measures.' That occurred just a couple of weeks ago. We have other states that have loud and long said that there needed to be more complex criteria for the approval of any of those water efficiency measures.

Unfortunately and regrettably, our state complied with their wishes and has allowed dozens of criteria to be put in place that make it very difficult for any such efficiency projects to be approved. Now, with any of those that are being contemplated, on farm simply will not be approved while the federal minister is in situ and I suspect while that federal government is in place. We are in pretty desperate straits in South Australia. We would be in desperate straits without climate change. We are still worse with the drying that we are seeing, particularly at the lower end of the Murray-Darling Basin system.

Why does this matter? Does it matter because people here are obsessed with this particular wetland or that particular species? No, although some of us are, some of us do care about those things. But what we all care about is that we continue to have a Murray-Darling Basin that functions, a Murray-Darling Basin where there is water that can be used for human purposes. To do that, you need to have a healthy environment. We can no longer regard this as a choice between those; there must be both.

We will only have sustainable irrigation and sustainable farming through the Murray-Darling Basin if we get it right for the environment. I do not know that that has quite dawned on New South Wales and Victoria. I am certain that it has not dawned on the National Party people who have paraded through the role of being minister federally, but it is very clear to everyone in South Australia that that is the case.

That is why we do have the most efficient irrigators in the country in South Australia. I congratulate them on having taken a lead early. That has happened under both sides of parliament in this chamber in this state. What has not happened, though, is that the National Party interstate has cared one jot for the health of the River Murray in South Australia. They think that is negotiable. They think it does not matter that we have to dredge the Murray open every single day, every single year. They think it does not matter that the Lower Lakes were nearly a complete catastrophe a few years ago.

They do not think it matters because they do not understand that that is how it will affect them, that the river will die from the bottom up, that the salt will go up, that the silt will go up. They think that that is all something that happens elsewhere and will happen at some other time. That time is coming closer and closer, and the longer we dillydally and wait for something good to happen because we are all friends around the table the nearer comes the point of catastrophe and the point of no return. Every South Australian has an interest in this—every South Australian. I cannot imagine a healthy and prosperous South Australia with a dead and dying Murray-Darling Basin.

I endorse and support this piece of legislation. If only we were doing more on every single front to preserve the Murray-Darling Basin system and to prioritise the health of our river in South Australia. If only we were putting every effort at every moment into that. Every time I see it from that side, I will support it, and that is why I support this piece of legislation.

Ms LUETHEN (King) (12:42): I rise to support the Landscape South Australia (Miscellaneous) Bill. This legislative amendment is consistent with South Australia's longstanding commitment to water compliance and response to the Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission. Quarterly compliance was introduced in the South Australian River Murray Prescribed Watercourse in 2019-20 to manage the risk that some water users were taking advantage of the previous annual compliance regime and illegally taking water throughout the year at the expense of both the environment and other law-abiding users.

South Australian water users are renowned for doing the right thing and remaining within their available water allocation at all times, as required by the Landscape South Australia Act and former NRM Act. The bill is proposing a minor, yet essential, amendment that will ensure we maintain our strong reputation as a leader in water compliance across the Murray-Darling Basin and at the broader national level.

The bill proposes to retrospectively apply to the start of the current water year (2020-21) to remove any doubt and explicitly express the terms of the compliance period arrangements and the SA River Murray and maintain our reputation as a leader in water compliance in the basin. It allows compliance action to be undertaken for unauthorised or unlawful water use in each of the states' prescribed water for a period that best suits that resource, rather than the period gazetted in the respective water levy notice.

It also removes a potential legal risk of successful appeal against the imposition of quarterly penalties for water theft in the SA River Murray that has lain undetected in both the NRM and the Landscape SA acts. This proposed amendment reflects the intention of the current Landscape South Australia Act and former NRM Act by enabling compliance action to be undertaken within a time frame that best suits the respective water resource without doubt.

In the SA River Murray, this amendment will help ensure that water can be reliably delivered to all water users, including the environment, when it is required. It will ensure that we are best able to deliver environmental water as intended, manage delivery constraints, inhibit market manipulation and respond to drought conditions. South Australia is considered a leader in water management and, as part of this, a leader in water compliance and enforcement.

We must have the ability to establish and implement appropriate compliance and enforcement arrangements that best suit the state's many different water sources. For example, these resources range from the ancient deep groundwater in the massive Great Artesian Basin and annually flowing streams in the western Mount Lofty Ranges to managed aquifer recharge schemes in the Adelaide Plains. It is simply not logical to think that the best outcomes will be obtained by applying exactly the same compliance and enforcement approach in each area.

While the thrust of the changes is about water, I wish to speak a little more broadly about our government's commitment to natural resources. A key election commitment by the Marshall Liberal government was the repeal of the Natural Resources Management Act and the introduction into parliament of the new Landscape South Australia Bill. The election commitment was based on a need for stronger local representation and a back-to-basics approach, particularly in our regional communities.

The Minister for Environment and Water, the Hon. David Speirs MP, introduced the new Landscape South Australia Bill into state parliament on 20 March 2019. Broadly, the bill established a new framework for how we manage the state's natural resources based on the following important principles:

decentralised decision-making;

a simple and accessible system;

a whole-of-landscape approach;

keeping community and landowners at the centre of how we manage our landscapes; and

a back-to-basics approach.

During 2018, extensive public consultation was undertaken with 26 community forums and 23 stakeholder sessions held across the state, attended by more than 1,000 people. More than 250 written submissions were received from the community and stakeholders. Much of this feedback was consistent with our election commitment; however, some elements around boundaries and how the boards interact with communities have been shaped by the community consultation.

Our landscapes underpin our communities, our economy, our wellbeing and our way of life, which is why we all have a responsibility to protect and manage our landscapes for the enjoyment of all South Australians. From 1 July 2020, the Landscape South Australia Act 2019 replaced the Natural Resources Management Act 2004 as the key framework for managing the state's land, water, pest plants and animals, and biodiversity across the state.

The department works in partnership with the eight new regional Landscape South Australia boards, responsible for administering the new act. A new entity, Green Adelaide, will also bring an integrated approach to managing Adelaide's urban environment. A key priority of landscape boards is to support local communities and landowners to be directly responsible for sustainably managing their region's landscapes with an emphasis on land and water management, pest animal and plant control, and biodiversity.

This includes providing greater funding and partnership opportunities with local community organisations to deliver on-ground works on projects. I commend the minister for his work to respond to South Australians' feedback about a more effective way to manage our landscapes. In my electorate, I received a great deal of feedback about unsatisfactory interference by the natural resources board and officers. I am glad our government has listened closely to this feedback and is now getting out of the way of landowners. Similarly, the future of our state in 2036 and beyond depends upon the ongoing health and viability of our vital water resources. The River Murray is the lifeblood of our regions and our cities, and we must always remain committed to maintaining our water security.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge our environmental volunteers in King, our Friends of Cobbler Creek and Friends of Para Wirra. Our volunteers keep our natural areas balanced and sustainable. The way to help our whole community value our local landscape is through grassroots involvement. I thank the Friends of Cobbler Creek, and in particular Stephen Rogers, for organising our recent Keep Australia Clean Day, and I thank every community member who came out and got involved.

In addition, I thank every community member who cleans up after themselves and who is not a tosser. Stephen Rogers has coined the local activity in King as Don't be a Tosser. The local Golden Grove High School students have created posters to support this campaign, and I proudly display these in my Golden Grove office.

This year, while cleaning up along the Grove Way, I was appalled at the number of discarded cigarette butts on the roadway. We must do better. The best results for our local area and across the state will only be achieved if everyone works together to protect our precious natural resources. I commend the bill to the house, and I thank the minister for his ongoing efforts to protect our natural resources for all South Australians.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (12:51): I rise to support this amended landscape bill because we know here in South Australia how important water resources—and in particular the southern system of the Murray—are to South Australians not only for a healthy environment but also because it is a huge economic driver.

The River Murray and its tributaries make up what is one of the world's great river estuaries, and it is supported with a significant number of storages that contribute to the flows into the system. About 10,000 gigalitres of water is captured, stored and put into the river systems to make sure that we have a healthy environment.

In a past life, I was a very strong advocate not only for the River Murray but also for making sure that the River Murray was tagged a healthy, working river. To have that tag of a healthy, working river we also must have custodians of the river, and in some way, shape or form governments continue to be part of that shaping.

More importantly, my involvement in river management went way back into the days when it used to be the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, which was chaired by Wendy Craik. She was a very strong advocate for better management of the river. David Dreverman was also one of the managers back then. However, we soon realised that the river was becoming very quickly overallocated, and back in 1969 the then Premier—I think it was Steele Hall—eventually struck a deal with the other basin states to give South Australia a secure supply of water so that we could then work our way forward with the building of the Dartmouth Dam.

We know that the Hume Dam, which was built in 1936, has some 3,800 gigalitres of storage, and, of course, we also rely on Lake Victoria. Many South Australians call it theirs and New South Welshmen call it theirs. It is in New South Wales, but it is a critical part of water infrastructure and also contributes to making up those pods of storage. We know that there are other tributaries and other water storages, but they are usually part of an unregulated river system, and so we cannot rely on those pods or dams to be part of what is a reliable supply of water into South Australia.

Listening to the deputy leader, it never ceases to amaze me that someone who appears to be so passionate about the River Murray continues to get her facts wrong. Salinity does not start at the mouth up: it starts from the top down, and it is a matter of how much flush you give it. It is the same with sediment: sediment comes from the top down and exits the river system. Again, we have to make sure that with a healthy working river we do have better managed systems.

As I said, back in 1969 the agreement the South Australian government had with its eastern counterparts was that we would get a reliable 1,850 gigalitres of water into our system and we would make sure that 1,850 was upheld at every given season. Back in 2006, we saw the first signs of cracks in a reliable supply of water. We had the Millennium Drought and we had overextraction of the system, and for far too long we had seen governments acting with their own interest without any other interests for the outside world of what they considered was the epicentre, which was their state.

In South Australia, we have always been the poor cousin at the end of the river, and it has been my concern over many years, since coming out of another life to live in the Riverland to become a food producer. As to people's connotation of irrigators, yes, we do have irrigators but, more importantly, they are food producers. They are the eyes and ears of our river system. Not only do they extract water for economic benefit but they are also the ones out there doing bird counts, they are the ones out there doing fish monitoring, they are the ones out there tagging trees and making sure that we do have a tell-tale so that when there are salinity slugs, when there are blackwater events, when there are environmental issues, we actually understand and better manage them.

We have recently seen blackwater events in the Darling, where we saw large fish kills and deoxygenated water come into our system. There was merry hell to pay, with people standing up and saying, 'This is outrageous.' Here in South Australia we, too, have had blackwater events, yet the Eastern States turned a blind eye. We saw large fish kills and we saw breeding native fish floating in our waterways in those backwaters in some of those environmental assets. We were outraged, but we managed it. We better managed it by giving small pulses of water down the river to exit the blackwater that was having no real effect when it came to the benefit of the environment.

The deoxygenated water was also very poor quality water for irrigating because it had little oxygen in it to give our trees and our food-producing plants the life they needed. It had an impact on environmental trees and it had an impact on our native fish. It showed that when we have a secure supply of water, as we do into South Australia, we can better manage our environment, and we always lead by example. I know that myself, coming in to be a food producer back in the eighties.

In South Australia, we had to constrain and better use our water. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition's poor explanation of why we are so good and why we are so efficient was that we had a cap. We had 1,850 gigalitres of water capped coming into South Australia, and so every litre had to be monitored and used wisely—more wisely than anywhere else in the country—so that we could actually maximise the return on every litre of water used for a consumptive pool into an environment.

That economy soon became more sustained. We will not go on to on-farm; we will use the delivery system. We sealed it all, we put it into pipes and we put it into pumps, rather than opening up sluice gates or using Dethridge wheels, which are highly unregulated, unreliable and not very accurate. We put water into pipes, we sealed our systems, we then pumped it into farm and then we used highly regulated emitters. Originally, we started with overhead sprinklers—large, full surface spray sprinklers—then we used microjets, microsprinklers. This was a transition away from being very inefficient and slowly making our way to being very efficient.

Nowadays, we are using drip irrigation. Some of us are using subsurface drip irrigation, so water never sees the light of day. Water is emitted to the tree root system under the ground so we have minimal loss and maximum efficiencies. That is why South Australia is the leader—because back at the time of that agreement we were forced to use water more efficiently than any other state.

Sadly, New South Wales and Victoria (Queensland to a lesser degree) have a very low allocation of high-security water. In South Australia, it is all high-security water. When any of us drive across the Hay Plain we are aghast at the number of open-channel, open-delivery systems they have over there. Then, once the water is delivered to the farm gate, they use siphon hoses to siphon water out to plants. Again, it is all open water. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.