MURRAY-DARLING BASIN BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 28 October 2008. Page 428.)

The Hon. SANDRA KANCK (22:35): I understand that we are making speeches that will deal with matters raised in both the Murray-Darling Basin Bill and the commonwealth powers bill, although it is not a cognate debate in the formal sense. However, rather than my making two speeches that are closely related, I will make one speech to deal with both bills.

The fact that we are debating these two bills in 2008 is an indication of the 'head in the sand' approach of the federal, South Australian and other state governments involved with the Murray-Darling Basin. Our state government keeps saying that no-one could have foreseen the current situation we are in with respect to water. It keeps talking about drought, rather than climate change, and I find that extremely strange. When I was briefed on these bills, the Minister for Water Security indicated that it was drought on top of climate change, but I am not sure of the scientific accuracy of that claim.

I reject what the government has said on numerous occasions—that no-one could have foreseen the situation we are now in. In 1988 (20 years ago), my party, the Democrats, held a National Greenhouse Conference here in Adelaide. One of the speakers was Professor Barry Pittock of the CSIRO, and the predictions he made in 1988 were very similar to the predictions that are coming out of the IPCC now. So, the information was there, and governments—successive South Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal—have ignored the advice and the evidence. There were plenty of talkfests but little action.

In 2004, on behalf of my party, I started calling for the federal government to take control of the Murray-Darling Basin. I suggested that, as the current situation was set out in the federal constitution, it would need to be by referendum. It is interesting to reflect that, in the time leading up to the establishment of a national constitution and federalism, in 1897 and 1898 the South Australian government argued that the impending federal government should take control of the rivers of that system. So, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Coming back to this suggestion that no-one could have foreseen the situation we are now in, a few years ago the Australian Greenhouse Office issued a paper stating that the River Murray would have 20 per cent less water by 2030; no-one seemed to react to that. I wonder where the leaders were in government to put two and two together—the 'two and two' being climate change, on the one hand, and, on the other, the increasing demands being made on the Murray-Darling Basin as a consequence of population growth, lifestyle demands and irrigation.

I continue to be amazed that our state government, with bipartisan support from the opposition, argues for a yet greater increase in population. We are not matching our water supplies to the population numbers we currently have, and I see no evidence that we will be able to reduce our use of water, and reduce our demands through our lifestyle, to the extent that we can sustain that increase in population.

There have been committees, inquiries, communiqués, reports, seminars and conferences, mostly to no avail. Governments were slow to act, and so much of what was taken was too little too late.

In 1995, a meeting of the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council agreed to a cap on the diversion of water from the basin. After that was set up, it was reviewed again in 2000. Everyone now agrees—with 20-20 hindsight—that the cap that was set was much too timid. It is not clear historically—and I guess history will look at this in the longer term—whether the governments lacked knowledge, courage or the intelligence to work out what exactly was happening.

Almost four years ago, in November 2004, the CSIRO released a report entitled 'Quantifying and valuing land-use change for integrated catchment management evaluation in the Murray-Darling Basin 1996-97 to 2000-01'. This should have rung very loud alarm bells about the burgeoning over-allocation of the system. I will read some of the findings of that report, and this is looking at the increased uses of water in the basin over a four to five-year period.

The total water requirement of irrigated agricultural land uses in the Murray-Darling Basin in 1996-97 was 9,346 gigalitres, which increased by nearly 29 per cent to 12,050 gigalitres in 2000-01. The total area of irrigated agriculture reported was 1.5 million hectares in 1996-97 and 1.8 million hectares in 2000-01, which was an increase of 22 per cent. Areas of irrigated dairy pasture expanded by some 217,000 hectares, a 71 per cent increase, which was astounding. Total water requirements of dairy increased by 1,730 gigalitres to a total of 4,194 gigalitres in 2000-01. Areas of irrigated cotton expanded by 108,000 hectares, a 36 per cent increase; and the total water requirements of cotton increased by 729 gigalitres to a total of 2,856 gigalitres in 2000-01.

It is interesting to note the figures about the profitability for all of that extra water use. The total profit at full equity from agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin in 1996-97 was $3.856 billion, which decreased slightly to $3.732 billion in 2000-01. The net economic returns to agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin in 1996-97 totalled $3.192 billion; this increased slightly to $3.199 billion in 2000-01. That comes out of the executive summary of that particular document. So, there are some very interesting figures there about this dramatic increase in the use of water from the basin in that four to five-year period, with almost no economic gain coming out of that.

What those figures do reveal, of course, is the enormous over-extraction that was occurring in the basin. The Natural Resources Committee, on a motion of mine carried by this chamber last year, has been looking at the upstream use of water, particularly by irrigators, to gain a better understanding of the impacts in South Australia.

This year, we made site visits to Mildura. Kerang, and Shepparton in Victoria; Dareton, Gol Gol, Deniliquin, Menindee, Burke, Moree, Griffith and Coleambally in New South Wales; and Goondiwindi and St George in Queensland and, in particular, the notorious Cubbie Station. I have learned a great deal from these trips, including the fact that the Queensland government actively encouraged farmers to build large 'ring' dams, as they call them. I am not sure why they are called ring dams because they are actually square or rectangular.

The Queensland government's position was that it was not willing to pay the cost of building the infrastructure of large reservoirs, and so it actively encouraged the private sector to build their own relatively large dams. That happened to a lesser extent in New South Wales. Certainly at Moree we saw some very large ring dams as well.

When we visited Coleambally in New South Wales, I discovered that the town was, I think, set up only 40 years ago. There was a sign indicating that the town was celebrating its 40^th birthday, and it was set up by the New South Wales government to be a town that lived exclusively off the profits of irrigation.

It was also very interesting to discover that in Queensland, in particular, it is only 20 years since the farmers took up irrigation. Prior to that they were either dryland farmers or graziers. Now that they have put that money into their storage systems, it is not something that they will step back from lightly. The message that they gave us is that, yes, they will get out of it provided enough money is paid to them. They made it very clear that the price that they would be expecting would be extremely high and probably out of the reach of government.

We met some angry irrigators like those at Deniliquin who were about to enter their third year of zero allocation of water, while about an hour's drive away at Griffith those irrigators were getting 95 per cent of their allocation. I think that may have had something to do with low-security and high-security water. The Deniliquin irrigators did not elaborate regarding whether it was high or low security, but I can tell members that in our early discussions they were extremely angry and had no sympathy for South Australia. In fact, they expressed a great deal of resentment that people in Adelaide were able to water their gardens for three hours a week when they had no irrigation entitlement whatsoever.

They settled down after we had dinner, and a few glasses of wine later they in many ways expressed surprise that a South Australian parliamentary committee had gone over there to hear their side of the story when they had not succeeded in getting the New South Wales government to listen to them.

However, in looking at these various irrigation schemes and towns within the Murray-Darling Basin we saw that each irrigator and each irrigation scheme was doing its own thing—obviously looking after its own and maximising its profit. There was no consciousness 20, 30 or 40 years ago that there was a medium-sized city called Adelaide at the end of that system that needed some of that water or that there was a Ramsar wetland at the bottom that would desperately need that water. All they were doing was earning a living. I seek leave to conclude my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

At 22:52 the council adjourned until Thursday 30 October 2008 at 11:00.