National Water Initiative

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (15:17): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Water and the River Murray a question about the National Water Initiative.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS: The very hardworking member for MacKillop has followed this issue quite closely. In consultation with the member for MacKillop, we are following the question that the minister handled last week regarding the National Water Initiative. The minister told the council:

I don't know how much more public the honourable member thinks the NRM boards can be in terms of water management policies and their costs. They are in their NRM plans. The plans are consulted on with the local communities, those plans are informed by community desires and, in fact, they are reported on in those documents that the NRM produces.

The presiding member of the South East NRM Board was specifically asked for the information regarding the cost of planning and management incurred by the department both statewide and in the South-East at the public consultation meeting in Mount Gambier last December, as no such information was included in the draft plan which has been consulted on. His response was that, despite requesting that very information from the minister's department, no such information has been released from the department to the NRM boards. Given the public statement by Mr Frank Brennan, how does the minister reconcile this reality with his answer to the council on 25 February?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:18): I thank the honourable member for his most important question. I didn't hear all of it, of course, but if I am right in assuming—

The Hon. T.J. Stephens interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Well, you are so softly spoken, Mr Stephens, a very gentle gentleman. But I think I might have got—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: You could have asked him to speak up instead of using it as an excuse not to answer the question.

The PRESIDENT: The minister has the floor.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: But I think I got the vibe of the question, Mr President, and I will riff on that, if I may. As I have said in this place before—that was a musical reference, Hon. Kyam Maher; the Hon. Mr Gazzola taught me that—water planning and management costs the state government more than $40 million statewide per annum—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I'm very interested in the theremin; I think it's a rather interesting instrument and I would like to see the Hon. Kyam Maher show us how it is played at some stage. The government is only seeking to recover $3.5 million from the NRM boards in 2015-16. In 2016-17 this increases to $6.8 million. As I said yesterday, I think, in this place, that is approximately 16 per cent of what we actually spend on water planning and management.

The amounts to be recovered from the NRM levies relate to water management activities required under the Natural Resources Management Act, including water licensing, compliance activities, science to support the development and management of water resources, development and review and amendment of water allocation plans and debt recovery, and are in line with the user-pays principle and a recommendation made jointly to me by NRM presiding members. The regions where most irrigation takes place—the South-East, the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin and the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges—recover 95 per cent of this cost.

I have agreed with the NRM board presiding members that from 2016–17 water planning and management costs are to be apportioned in accordance with the recommendation, and will take into account where the water planning and management costs are incurred, using each NRM region's number of water licensees and total volume allocated as indicators of this business activity, as well as where the beneficiaries of sustainable water management reside, using the proportion of the state's population in each NRM region as an indicator.

Abiding by user-pays principles is the fairest way to recover the cost of these activities. Even with these principles, as I highlighted previously, we are still recovering only a very small portion of these costs from the beneficiaries. When you compare that to other states, we offer significant subsidies to our water users. When all water-related charges are taken into account, the NRM water levy rates paid by irrigators in our major food and wine producing areas, such as the South-East and the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin, are much lower than our interstate competitors.

I do not know why honourable members in this chamber who ask questions about this so frequently disregard that; they absolutely disregard any direct comparison with industries interstate that are paying a fee that is exceptionally higher than what would be paid by irrigators in South Australia. They do not seem to be at all interested in that difference, in how this state government is protecting and looking after our irrigators and seeking to recover only partial costs—as I said, a very small component of the costs that are expended on water planning and management. We will continue to protect our irrigators and will continue to educate honourable members about how we are doing that.