National Water Initiative

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:02): Derived from the answers from the minister, can the minister confirm, if the state government had to cut costs for the water management services, would he then have to reduce the allocations to irrigators as a measure?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:02): In a hypothetical sense, if you cut the amount of money that boards have available to do that science and monitoring of the water resources, then one possible outcome of that is that, because the boards do not know with any degree of accuracy or precision how much water is in that resource and what the recharge rate will be, they will inevitably have to make much more conservative estimates in terms of allocation.

If you are investing in science and monitoring, if you are getting a better understanding of what the water resource is—how it is sustained over the years and how the recharge rates work—you can make much more accurate decisions about how much water can sustainably be taken out for irrigation purposes. If you don't have that information, if you don't invest in that knowledge, then your decisions will have to be far more conservative.