Water Allocation

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:27): My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, for Water and the River Murray, and for Climate Change. Will the minister confirm whether he will be implementing, or considering implementing, compulsory low-flow bypasses—yes or no?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:28): I have already given the honourable member an explanation, at great length, about low-flow bypasses and why we need to have them. Just to recap very quickly—

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire: Yes or no?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: It is a complicated subject and he wants a simplified answer; perhaps because he is a very simple man. There are a lot of people with a lot of interest in this, and if you compare landowners, people who are working on the land at the top of the catchment, versus their neighbours further down the catchment there are issues of equity that are involved. If you allow people at the top of the catchment to take water and dam it without some mechanism to provide water down that catchment to the next landowner, who wants their dam to be filled, then you are going to set up a situation in our community where people are fighting each other and their neighbours for rights to water.

These are the issues that need to be looked at, and the solutions that are coming out are low-flow bypasses. That enables some water to trickle down the system when there is water coming through the system. Whilst the people of the top of the catchment are filling up their water catchments, others down the system, other irrigators and other landowners down the system who depend on that water—not to mention the local environment, that depends on those ephemeral flows—need to have some of that water coming into their own dams.

So, the Hon. Mr Brokenshire does not think about that. He is only thinking about the bloke at the top of the system. He is not worried about all those other landowners, their neighbours, who actually rely on the water as well. However, this government has to deal with the difficult issues of equity and access to water in the system and sharing it appropriately with the environment, and that is what we will do.