Murray-Darling Basin Plan

Ms HUTCHESSON (Waite) (14:48): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Can the Deputy Premier update the house on the government's commitment towards the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:48): I am very pleased to talk again about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan because at last we have seen some significant progress in its delivery through the passage in the federal parliament of a piece of legislation that modifies the plan. It does it in the following ways—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: First of all, it legitimately accepts that, having had nine-odd years of almost complete inactivity, we are not going to reach the plan in time. For example, of 450 gigalitres—

Mr Pederick interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Hammond!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —of water for the environment that was part of the deal for South Australia to sign up, only 20-odd gigalitres have been delivered. It is due by June next year. Clearly, that is not going to be possible. Equally, some infrastructure projects that were agreed to—although South Australia of course has completed ours; interstate has not—were due to be completed and are not going to be able to be done in time by the end of this year, and therefore there is an extension proposed for those as well.

That is important, but what is really important is a new approach to being able to get that 450 gigalitres. To date it has only been able to be done through efficiency projects and, while I support the efficiency projects and hope that the commonwealth will soon open up another round of them, it has been demonstrated for the last 10 years that, if you're trying to get 450 gigalitres for efficiency projects, and you get about 20 gigalitres, probably that is not the tool that's going to get you to where you need to go, even if you add another three years to the time that we have to do it.

So what they have done is they have included a capacity to lease back, which is where the irrigator continues to own the water, but leases the water to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. It remains to be seen how well that will be used. I suspect that the challenge with that is that at exactly the moment when the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder needs the water is exactly the moment when the irrigator is going to want to have the water as well, but that policy will be developed.

There will, of course, remain efficiency projects, but importantly voluntary sale of water will be allowed. That is the one way we know is the cheapest and most effective way to get water. In fact, although there are people who are deeply concerned about voluntary buybacks, and I understand that, I will quote one person who came to realise that there is a necessity nonetheless to look at them:

I always think that while buybacks are a last resort you don't rule them out altogether. You put them in your toolkit and, if you don't need to pull them out, particularly upstream, because South Australia doesn't have any more water to give and won't be required to provide much towards the 450, but if you need to use buybacks or even threaten to use buybacks I wouldn't rule those out.

I am, of course, quoting the Leader of the Opposition. I think Labor and I are pretty close on that.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: Labor, who the Leader of the Opposition has just called in public the 'sneering elites', or the people that he is close to—it is impossible to tell. Of course, what in fact we found—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —is that irrigators themselves are very keen on buybacks because they are oversubscribing a program that's already open, trying to buy water voluntarily for the environment, where they have had double the amount of interest than they expected. A recent survey showed that 63 per cent of regional Australians support the policy to reintroduce voluntary water buybacks. This is finally a way in which we may see the 450 delivered, but not through complacency, not through just assuming our friends in Canberra will do the right thing, but continuing to stand up for the river. And let's hope that the Leader of the Opposition remains close to Labor on that, and that we finally have team South Australia back.