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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-07-22 Daily Xml
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COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENTS

Mr O'BRIEN (Napier) (14:30): Will the Premier advise the house on any of the outcomes of the recent meeting of COAG?

The Hon. M.D. RANN (Ramsay—Premier, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change) (14:30): On 3 July 2008, the Prime Minister, premiers, chief ministers and treasurers—this is a new innovation having the treasurers there—

The Hon. K.O. Foley: Great innovation!

The Hon. M.D. RANN: —which I must say I did not support—but, anyway, all the Australian jurisdictions met in Sydney for the Council of Australian Governments. It was the third such meeting since the election of a federal Labor government in November 2007. Since that time, an enormous amount of work has been undertaken under the leadership of the Prime Minister and in the spirit, I believe, of cooperative federalism.

There have been significant outcomes from these efforts that will advance the national interest and South Australia's interest. The advances include developing a seamless national economy by reforming Australia's business regulation and tackling overlapping and inconsistent regulation. This is an area of reform long overdue. It does not make any sense—never has made any sense—that people doing a trade in one state cannot work in another state, but can in a third state: a total shambles that has existed for years. We need to get behind business and work towards a seamless economy, and I am very pleased that is very strongly the view of the Prime Minister.

An agreement was reached at the meeting to end the fragmented approach to workers' occupational health and safety. Practical measures will be adopted to harmonise the multitude of occupational health and safety regimes across the country.

COAG has also agreed to establish a new national business names registration system that will lead to savings for business operators. A new model for state-federal financial arrangements has been agreed to modernise payments for specific purposes and the development of national partnership payments by the commonwealth. The COAG working parties are continuing their work in the areas of health and ageing, productivity, indigenous reform, climate change and water, and business regulation and competition.

The proposed October meeting of COAG in Perth should see much more of that work brought to a conclusion, with tangible proposals for reform. Significantly, COAG committed to a sustained long-term engagement to achieve the Closing the Gap targets for indigenous Australians and, in a major first step, COAG agreed in principle to a national partnership with joint federal-state funding of about $547 million over six years to address the priority indigenous children in their early years. I hope that all members of this parliament would support this priority being given to indigenous children.

Based on South Australia's representations at COAG, it was agreed that work be undertaken urgently to determine how to improve sharing of information between government and non-government organisations about families and children at risk. COAG will receive advice on this matter at the proposed October meeting—better flowing of information not just between the states but also with the federal government, given that it does Centrelink payments, so that, as best as possible, we can know when families at risk are crossing from one border to another.

I would also like to focus for a moment on COAG's major achievement in dealing with the long-term issues facing the Murray-Darling Basin. At the Sydney meeting, a binding inter-governmental agreement between the Murray-Darling Basin states and the commonwealth was signed to give effect to the memorandum of understanding reached in Adelaide in late March. This binding agreement will ensure that, for the first time in a century, the Murray-Darling Basin will be managed by an independent expert authority free from parochial interest and in the best interest of the health of the system.

The independent authority will develop a basin plan that will properly balance the environmental needs of the system with the needs of sustainable industry and safeguard the water needs of communities. The independent authority and its basin plan will be able to set a cap for the first time on the amount of water that can be extracted from the Murray-Darling system. That cap will translate into a state cap, which must be managed by the state authorities. The basin plan will also include controls, very importantly, over ground water resources. The independent authority will set the caps under the basin plan on the basis of scientific knowledge and objective conditions. As I have previously said, the Murray-Darling Basin is a national asset and it must be managed in the national interest. The river knows no borders. The Murray-Darling Basin states and the ACT will be bound to live with the basin plan.

In conjunction with the signing of the IGA, the federal government announced the provision of $3.7 billion of water infrastructure projects to improve the efficiency of water use and capture the water savings. South Australia succeeded in obtaining $610 million for its Murray Futures bid. Murray Futures is a most comprehensive and ambitious proposal to get it right for the River Murray from the border to the mouth. At the top of the list will be a project worth in excess of $100 million to completely re-engineer the water infrastructure within the townships, communities and irrigators that draw water from the Lower Lakes. The Lower Lakes are in a dire condition. The current drought, the worst on record, means that it is failing those communities that rely on it for drinking water and irrigation of crops and stock.

The proposal under the Murray Futures plan would end the use of water from the Lower Lakes by those communities and vastly improve their water security and water quality. Instead, they will be connected to high quality water drawn from the River Murray at around Tailem Bend via a new integrated network of pipelines around the Lower Lakes communities and farms that would link to the existing pipeline.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. M.D. RANN: If you don't support this then go and tell your local people you don't support it, because the plan came from them. Irrigation pipelines—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.D. RANN: —will be built to supply Currency Creek and Langhorne Creek—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.D. RANN: What a total phoney you are with your local residents! Irrigation pipelines will be built to supply Currency Creek and Langhorne Creek, and potable water pipes will go to the Narrung and Poltalloch peninsulas and the Raukkan Aboriginal Community. Aspects of this project can start almost immediately, and the entire project could be finished within two years.

In addition, about $200 million will be allocated to undertake medium to long-term projects around the Lower Lakes and Coorong to help save and protect the future of this valuable Ramsar site. This will include investigating consulting the community on a range of new infrastructure works that would enable the better environmental management of the Lower Lakes, especially in terms of diluting hyper-saline water from the southern lagoon of the Coorong and regulating the flow of water between the lakes.

Another major priority project would be to allocate more than $150 million to reinvigorate our Riverland irrigation industries. The overhaul of the way in which the Riverland irrigators manage their farms and the wider industry would be a voluntary process developed in partnership with the irrigation industry and, if taken up as an option by enough irrigators, it could transform the economy and environment in that area. This project involves a suite of options that includes modernising irrigation technology, adopting new production systems including new crop sites that use less water, opening up new areas that are more environmentally sustainable, and moving production from areas suffering from high salinity. Depending on how many people take up these options, it is estimated the project could save up to 100 gigalitres, of which 50 gigalitres would be made available for industry renewal.

The Murray Futures proposal includes a project which would cost in excess of $80 million and which involves removing pumps from backwaters and wetlands to the main stem of the river for hundreds of irrigators to improve their security of supply and quality of water. By changing where those users access water we could save about 50 gigalitres of River Murray water, because we could cut evaporation losses and allow these wetlands to be managed more sustainably so that they could fill and dry up when necessary. It will position South Australia to respond to the longer term challenges facing the River Murray, particularly in the future of reduced water availability and climate change. Of course, the billions of dollars invested in water efficiency projects upstream of South Australia will deliver increased water flows to this state. This will have an enormously positive effect on the quantity of environmental flows here and on improved water quality.

In relation to water, COAG also committed to lift the current 4 per cent limit on water trade out of districts in the southern Murray-Darling Basin. The Murray-Darling Basin jurisdictions have agreed to work to achieve a 6 per cent target by the end of 2009 and remove the limit on trade across the basin by 2014. I am very aware of the immediate needs of all the communities along the Murray and Lower Lakes for additional water. The exceptionally low inflows in the river system are continuing. The prospects for short-term relief are not high, because even average or above average rainfall will not produce large run-off due to the dryness of the catchment area.

Together with the Prime Minister and minister Wong I visited the Lower Lakes on 5 July where we heard directly from the local community about their plight. Unfortunately, the record drought has meant that, without substantial rainfall, our short-term options are very limited. The government will continue to consult and work with these communities through my special adviser, the former premier of South Australia, the Hon. Dean Brown. I want to commend him for his outstanding job.

Responding now to COAG: I will be attending the next COAG meeting to conclude a number of arrangements we have been working on with the commonwealth and other jurisdictions. I am very confident that the process will deliver significant benefit to South Australia and the nation. In conclusion, I must say, however, that I was bemused about some of the comments made by the Leader of the Opposition. Do members recall the day when I was told, 'Just go over there and put the Victorian Premier in a headlock'? That was going to convince him to give up their constitutional rights. It was somewhat bizarre. He said that he would only complain that I had not, according to him, taken up the challenge to make a comment at the press conference at the conclusion of the COAG meeting. Apparently, I did not speak at the press conference.

Maybe he did not watch the press conference or maybe he left after the first five minutes of the news conference, because, when you looked at the television news that night, he got a bit of a run from people who didn't check—apparently I didn't speak. But, anyway, we then heard that he was going to broker the deal. I suggest that he get a transcript of the press conference, including my contribution, which can be found on the Prime Minister's website. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition would be better off spending his time working on his Liberal colleagues interstate to avoid the nasty rebuff they delivered him. Remember, I had to go over and put someone in a headbutt, because that is what a Premier apparently does.

The Hon. K.O. Foley: Headlock.

The Hon. M.D. RANN: Headlock, okay, but he ended up with a headbutt! On ABC Radio 891 on 7 July, the Leader of the Opposition said that he was going to Sydney to meet state and territory Liberal leaders of the opposition. He said:

What I'm trying to broker is an agreed position right across the country from the Liberal oppositions.

He told 891 listeners that he would be raising with the Liberal leaders a proposal to back an agreement to release water from the Menindee Lakes. Later that day, news reports heralded that the state opposition leader was unable to get his New South Wales counterpart to agree that water should be released from the Menindee Lakes to replenish the Lower Lakes in South Australia. The report said that the New South Wales opposition leader, Barry O'Farrell, did not support the proposal. Apparently, the headlock didn't work! When asked by Matthew Abraham whether he failed to get the New South Wales opposition leader to lock in behind the SA opposition leader's proposal, he responded, 'Yeah, that's absolutely right.'

Of course, as much as we would like to see more water for the Lower Lakes, it was an irresponsible proposal from the Leader of the Opposition and rightly rejected. The limited water held in the Menindee Lakes underpins critical human needs during these drought conditions for South Australian and interstate communities. To release the water would have been a grossly irresponsible act that even his Liberal colleagues interstate recognised; they saved him from himself. I guess that my message to the Leader of the Opposition is that going on radio and putting people in headlocks sounds good, but the reality is far different.

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