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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
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WATER (COMMONWEALTH POWERS) BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 23 September 2008. Page 116.)

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (11:04): Today the parliament is addressing a matter which can only be described as being too little, too late. If ever there was a fitting time to use that commonly used phrase, this is certainly the time with regard to this matter, the Water (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2008. I will go through a range of matters which will demonstrate why we have before us today a bill which is far too little and far too late.

I will remind the house of what has happened over the past, and it has been a long time coming. I might even go back to the 1890s. I will remind the house of what has happened in more recent times and how the government of South Australia and the federal government in Canberra have failed the people of South Australia. I will remind the house of some of the things which should have been done, both by the government of South Australia and the federal government in Canberra, as well as some of the things which now will not be done because we have missed an opportunity.

It is not what is in this bill that is the problem for South Australia; it is what is not in this bill. It is the missed opportunity—the things that have not been done that are not being addressed and the mistakes of the past that are being ignored that is the problem. I accept that there is nothing in this bill that is a problem to the opposition, and we will be supporting the bill. However, there is plenty in the bill which will create problems because the government of South Australia has accepted this as a solution. This is not a solution, and in accepting it at this time it will prevent us as a state and as a nation from doing the hard work and getting the achievements that we do need to get if we are to fix this problem.

We will see people across this nation think that, as far as the legislative process goes, we have solved the problem, whereas this bill barely starts to solve the problem. Every South Australian is now very well aware of the difference between the rhetoric this government comes out with—particularly the Premier, but all the front bench, including this minister—and the reality that sits behind that rhetoric. Every South Australian is aware of that. Let me use just one example which, I think, people will appreciate right up front. I recall both the minister and the Premier exhorting in this house that what we need is an independent authority. I remember them saying, 'What we need is something like the Reserve Bank Board; that is the sort of independence we need.' Last week we saw the Reserve Bank Board in action.

We saw the Reserve Bank Board sitting behind closed doors making an independent decision. We saw the Reserve Bank Board, with all the pressure from the public, from the pundits, from the so-called experts and from the politicians (not the least), yet the Reserve Bank Board did not consult with the federal Treasurer, it did not consult with the Prime Minister and it did not consult with the state treasurers. The Reserve Bank Board made an independent decision. That is what the Premier of this state has said that we need to save the River Murray. On rare occasions I happen to agree with the Premier. We need an independent authority, which will make decisions without fear and without favour and which will not be subject to having to consult, being vetoed or being overturned by state ministers or, indeed, a federal minister.

As we debate this measure today, I will point out exactly where this bill fails to give us a Reserve Bank Board-type authority, fails to give us that sort of independence and fails to deliver what we need in South Australia. We need decisions made independently from political consideration. We need decisions based on good science. We need decisions which recognise the here and now. For goodness sake, we need decisions made that recognise the needs of the environment, and we need water allocations made for the environment so that the environment has at least the same status as high security water holders.

At the moment, with water restrictions, we have irrigators on 11 per cent—hopefully, we might get some rain in the catchment and that will improve—irrigators in New South Wales, on the Southern Darling, are on 100 per cent, irrigators on the Murrumbidgee are on almost 100 per cent, and we have the environment—as we see every time we look at the Lower Lakes—on zero per cent. As most commentators have been saying, we need the independent authority to be able to say, 'Yes, as a country, as a nation, as a state, we do value the environment and we do value the environment highly,' because that is something that has been missed by the Rudd government, and it is something which has obviously fallen off the radar for the Rann Labor government here in South Australia.

One of the things that I have learned from listening to this government over the past 6½ years is that the greater the spin the less the substance. There is an inverse proportionality between the spin that comes out of this government and what actually happens in reality. I will talk about the process that we are going through in a few minutes, but it is a very convoluted process that we are using here today, and one that certainly has not been used by this parliament in the 10 or 11 years that I have been here, to the best of my memory. It is one which I understand has been used previously but on very rare occasions, and I will talk about that in a moment.

This process means that most of the members of this place have very little understanding of the detail behind the bill, because the bill we are debating is very small. I will come to that in a moment. That has allowed the government to spin and spin and spin, because most members of the house and most members of the media of this state are not going to pick up the document that sits behind this bill (the tabled text) and read it and understand it.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: They should.

Mr WILLIAMS: Of course they should—the minister says they should, and they should, and I will come to that in a minute. I am talking about the relationship between spin and substance. Every time I hear a minister—particularly the Premier, but any of his ministers—come out and use the term 'historic' with regard to something they do—it is the first time; it is the biggest; this is essential for South Australia—you know that they are playing on people's emotions.

When this government resorts to playing on people's emotions you know that it has run out of substance, and that is what has happened here. It reminds me of a quote—and I cannot quite remember it; one of my colleagues may be able to enlighten me—that was made in the British parliament where one member suggested that another member was intoxicated with their own verbosity. I think that would be an apt description of our Premier.

I feel somewhat for the minister in this situation, because I am sure she came to the job, the ministry that she holds, with the best of intentions and with a well-held belief that she would actually be able to do something, particularly for her own constituents, because her constituents are probably the most affected by what has been happening with the River Murray. I think the minister, in her heart of hearts, must be dismayed at the betrayal—

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: The drought.

Mr WILLIAMS: —of the government. She says the drought. It was only three weeks ago, on Saturday, that the Prime Minister breezed into town and announced the changes to special exit payments for irrigators under certain conditions. The Premier was quoted in the Sunday Mail as saying that this was the last piece of the jigsaw to save the River Murray. The minister was quoted as saying that it was fantastic news. I am sure that is not what she said in cabinet on Monday morning, because I think it was by late Tuesday that the next statement came that maybe this was the last piece of the jigsaw; that they were actually going to go out as a government and do something positive to try to keep people on their farms and on their irrigation blocks in the Riverland, Murraylands and around the Lower Lakes. They were actually going to underpin water for the critical needs of the permanent plantings.

Now, according to the Premier's own comments on Sunday, that was not part of the plan on the Saturday when he had accepted commonwealth money to help people leave the industry. I am sure that the minister had to fight damn hard in cabinet to get the decision to do something to keep people on their irrigation blocks—which was announced, I think, on the Tuesday.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: Supported not only by myself, minister; it was something I suggested to you almost 12 months ago. The response of yourself and your colleague the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries to my suggestion was something like incredulity that we would use taxpayers' money to underwrite the permanent plantings of the state. I argued for that all that time ago because I could see, and the Liberal party could see, the importance of those permanent plantings—albeit that they were owned by private businesses. They are an important part of the economic wealth of the state, and way back 12 months ago I recognised that there was a need for the government of South Australia to do something about that.

It is just a pity, minister, that you had to wait so long and that you could not do anything about it until after you had announced you would accept commonwealth money to help people exit the industry on the condition that they tore their crops out of the ground. That is lamentable, and that is why I said in my opening remarks that it is what is not in this package that is the problem, not what is in there. I may have to repeat that from time to time to remind the minister how her own constituents are being let down.

I now turn directly to the minister's second reading explanation. It is interesting that the minister says, almost in her opening remarks:

It is clear that the current governance and planning structures for the Murray-Darling Basin are outdated and will not enable us to deal with the pressures of overallocation, climate change, environmental degradation and future economic development.

I am not too sure that they are outdated. If being outdated is the problem, they in fact became outdated in 1901 when we moved from separate colonies to federation. If the governance arrangements became outdated, that is when they did so, and that is probably when we should have seen that we needed to move as a nation. Now, 107 years later, the minister says that they are outdated. The reality is that being outdated is not the problem; they just do not work, because they have entrenched parochialism. That is the problem.

I have to say (and I will demonstrate this as we go through the tabled text), that what we are discussing today reinforces that entrenched parochialism will stay. It is not being undone or overturned, and that is the problem. The upstream states simply thumb their noses at agreements, at protocols, and at South Australia. Their actions are treated with absolute impunity. We learnt just recently, probably only a matter of a month ago—

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: Excuse me, Mr Speaker, but if the minister wants to carry out a conversation I suggest she goes out into the lobby to do so.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister should show the same respect to the member for MacKillop that he always shows to her during her contributions.

Mr WILLIAMS: Thank you, sir. We learnt only quite recently that, after at least six years of drought, the Queensland irrigators harvested more water in the last water season than they have ever harvested before. That is what I am saying about parochial interests coming into play: more water is harvested than ever before. Down here in South Australia we scratch our heads and wonder why the Lower Lakes are literally dying; we wonder why permanent plantings on the river are dying and 10 per cent of the citrus groves in the Riverland were allowed to die last year because of lack of water.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: I will come to that, because we did a lot about water in South Australia, to be quite honest—we did a damned lot. We were probably taking a bit of advice from the minister in those days, because I remember the then Premier used to dance to her tune on numerous occasions. It was the minister who caused him to hold an inquiry which brought about his ultimate downfall. The minister was not without influence when the Liberal Party was in power.

I do not recall the minister coming forward with any grand plan in those days. The minister will have an opportunity to round up at the end of the debate, and I am looking forward to the minister tabling the grand plan that she put before the Olsen and Kerin governments when she first came in here and the Liberal Party was in power—her grand plan for saving the Riverland and saving the River Murray—because, obviously, she has something that the rest of us are not aware of.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: having seen what happened in Queensland—and I will come to some other examples later on in my contribution—will we see any changes as a result of this bill? My gut feeling is that the answer to that question is no. I quote from the minister's second reading—and this is the sort of thing that horrifies me about this government—where she stated:

South Australia has been instrumental in the development of a governing framework whereby the commonwealth and the other basin states will implement new arrangements for managing the basin's water resources. As such, it is appropriate that we are the first state to introduce legislation to reform the governance arrangements for the Murray-Darling Basin.

That is exactly what I was talking about earlier when I said that we are giving people false hope. We are making out that we are doing something when, in reality, we are doing very little. We are claiming kudos. We are tugging at the heartstrings when we are actually not achieving very much at all. If we have to rely on sending out press releases saying that we are the first state to introduce the legislation to try to win some kudos in the electorate, we are missing the point. That is the point I am trying to make.

If this government had some substance to these bills it would be issuing press releases about the substance; it would not be issuing press releases stating, 'We're the first; we're the biggest. Aren't we good?' Self-praise, minister, is no recommendation.

I am not an avid TV watcher but I think it is the Kath and Kim program where one of the characters says, 'Look at me, look at me, look at me.' That is this state Labor government—look at me, look at me, look at me! I have to admit that I have never seen the program but I understand that that is a catchcry of one of its stars. It is certainly the catchcry of this government—look at me, look at me! I think it is embarrassing.

The minister says that the Liberal Party has not done anything. I have already pointed out that, if the current legislation and arrangements were outdated, they became outdated way back in January 1901. In the intervening period, there has obviously been at least robust debate between those former colonies that are now states.

The commonwealth has generally had a relatively low profile but, from time to time, it has been called upon to put in large sums of money, especially for works. I recently read some material about the discussions preceding the building of the Hume reservoir. In 1922, the commonwealth government announced that it would be a funding party to the building of the Hume reservoir if the basin states (principally New South Wales and Victoria) used it only to underpin the existing licences, not to issue licences. We all know what happened there. The commonwealth put money in, and the states kept issuing licences. That is what happened throughout the 1900s, and I suspect it will continue to happen, because we do not have it right.

However, in November 2006, John Howard—quite unique among prime ministers—said, 'This is enough. It's time we actually did something about it.' It was the Liberal prime minister who actually recognised that it was time to pull the states into order, to get them to come together and cede power to the commonwealth government so that we could have a truly independent authority to manage the River Murray.

In November 2006—I think it was Melbourne Cup day—he called the states together. What was South Australia's reaction to that? I remember the Premier on television that night, as he walked out of the meeting in Canberra, saying, 'We are going to build a weir at Wellington. That's our solution. That will save South Australia.' That is how much our Premier knew about what was going on when he went to that historic meeting. That is how in touch with the situation our Premier was—build a weir at Wellington!

The minister has had the hapless task of retreating from that statement ever since, saying 'We don't want to build a weir; it's our last resort.' How many times have we heard that since the Premier said that that was the solution to the problem? That is how out of touch the Premier was when he went to that most important meeting. No wonder we have missed the opportunity.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: Wrong meeting, Mitch.

Mr WILLIAMS: Right meeting, minister. More recently—following that meeting in November 2006—in January or February 2007, the Howard government said, 'We want to go further. We are going to pull the states together. We recognise that there's going to be pain, but we have to fix this for the nation—and we will kick in $10 billion. We know there is overallocation; we will buy the water out. We will earmark $3 billion to buy water, to buy licences or to compensate growers who are willing to give up their licences.'

At that time, $3 billion would have bought about 1,500 gigalitres of water, which is a pretty good start. It is what the Wentworth group was calling for. It is what a lot of the commentators were saying would be needed. I will probably present some information later to suggest that even that will not be enough, because of some other things that we failed to do over the years.

We know that the Labor Party had a national plan, and that national plan was to undermine John Howard politically. Its national plan was nothing to do with saving the River Murray; it was nothing to do with saving irrigators in the Riverland: it was about winning a federal election on 24 November 2007. That is what the Labor Party's plan was about, and that is what it set about doing—undermining John Howard's plan, making sure that it would not succeed.

What has been happening is a pity, and that is why I am saying not only is it too little, it is too late. We have lost precious time while those political games were being played. Mike Rann is supposedly an influential member on the national Labor Party scene. It ill-behoves him as the Premier of South Australia, to waste that time, but that is what happened, and that is history.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: That's your spin.

Mr WILLIAMS: You are in so far, minister, you can't get out of it, can you? The Premier—and he repeated this only recently—went to New South Wales and spoke to the New South Wales government and Premier and said, 'We need to get on board. We need to do this. We need to adopt what Howard's put before us.' The Premier then went to Queensland and did the same there, and came home and said, 'I've got agreement from New South Wales; I've got agreement from Queensland. I think we're going to be saved.' Not once has the Premier ever claimed that he went to Victoria. He has never claimed to have gone to Victoria and argued the case with the Victorian government, with the Premier of Victoria. Isn't it curious why he did not do that?

Why did the Premier go all the way to Sydney to talk to the New South Wales government, and then go all the way to Brisbane to talk to the Queensland government, and not bother to go across the border to Victoria? It is curious why the Premier failed to do that. My curiosity suggests conspiracy—perish the thought! But we do know that the Victorian government kept wriggling and squirming and twisting and turning. We do know that the Victorian government kept saying to Malcolm Turnbull and John Howard, 'Just give us a couple of weeks—almost there, almost got it sorted out. Just give us a little bit of time.' That went on month after month. That is fact.

The Labor Party got what it wanted: it won the federal election, and the growers in South Australia are still suffering. The Lower Lakes and the communities around them are still suffering. The economy of this state is still suffering. It is a form of politics that I do not subscribe to. I do not think that our job in this place is to work towards the detriment of our citizens to achieve a political end. I do not think that is what we are here for.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: You are really funny, and you know it.

Mr WILLIAMS: That is what your government did, and you know it, minister. We got a federal Labor government, and what did it do? The Howard government actually passed the Water Act 2007, which set up most of the things which John Howard believed we should be doing. That was passed by the federal parliament but, unfortunately, it was limited in its powers because the Commonwealth Constitution did not give it some of the powers it really needed, and we are purporting to give it some more powers that are going to make it work. I am arguing that we are not giving it nearly enough powers.

Mr O'Brien: Be specific.

Mr WILLIAMS: I will be specific; I will come to that, Michael.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: It will take a while; this is a large matter, minister. I would hate to think of how many words have come out of your mouth on water matters over the last couple of years, minister. As minister, you get a lot of opportunities. What did the Rudd government do when it came to power? It did diddly squat with regard to the River Murray; it did diddly squat with regard to the $10 billion plan.

As luck would have it, they were due to come to a COAG meeting in Adelaide on 26 March 2008. How embarrassing would it have been to have a COAG meeting in Adelaide with the River Murray, the water situation and the drought not even on the agenda? I do not know whose agenda it was on, but we know from the Victorian Premier that it was not on his agenda. In the documents he had when he came to Adelaide for that COAG meeting, the River Murray, water, the drought, and the $10 billion plan was not on the agenda that he had been given for the COAG meeting. I think it only made it onto the agenda in the car park at the Magill Estate, which is a fine restaurant.

So, there was a very hastily put together agreement. The political imperative for our Premier and his government at that time was to get John Brumby's agreement. Nothing else mattered; they had to get John Brumby's signature. That is where things started to get really messy and go really astray, because the price of getting that signature was huge. The price of getting that signature is one of the reasons it is too little, because we gave away far too much. The Victorian bureaucrats—

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: The minister says, 'Rubbish'. The Victorian bureaucrats are still laughing up their sleeve at this minister and this government. They did us in the eye. When I talk to them, what fascinates them is how easily it happened. So, that is the problem: it became a political solution to a political problem created by politicians playing politics to win a federal election—the political problem created by the politics of the past 12 months. Then, when you had all the state premiers in South Australia, we had to get a solution—and, if you read all the press in the run up to that meeting, the solution was to get John Brumby's signature. How would we do it? Well, we would do whatever we had to—and that is what they did.

A huge price was paid for that compromise: $1 billion to Victoria to work on some infrastructure, which the experts I talk with and the experts who commentate publicly suggest may well have a net effect of having less water in the river, not more. How amazing is that, when we have a solution that costs the taxpayers of this nation $1 billion and we end up with less water in the river? There are a lot of people out there—and I happen to have great sympathy for what they say—who do not believe that the Victorian food bowl projects, stages 1 or 2, will deliver the sort of savings the Victorian government has claimed. In fact, the Victorian Auditor-General supports the position I am taking and questions the supposed saving. Even the minister before us today has been on record saying that she has concerns about the project and the supposed savings. But not once have I heard this minister, the Premier, or anyone from this government complain about the Victorians and what they are doing, and not once have I heard them complain about the Victorians building a pipeline over the Great Divide.

So, we will have a second major city in Australia being reliant on the River Murray and its tributaries for its water. At a time when the Premier is preaching the doom of climate change, he has not mentioned one word about Victorians taking 75 gigalitres of water a year out of the Goulburn Valley and pumping it into Melbourne—75 gigalitres a year that currently is subject to restrictions. I think the irrigators who would otherwise be using that water are currently still on zero allocations. Is that right?

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: No.

Mr WILLIAMS: That is not right?

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: No.

Mr WILLIAMS: What allocation do they have in the Goulburn Valley?

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: All right, I will. It is probably very low. Once it has been piped into Melbourne, by sleight of hand at some point in time, I would stake my life on the fact that that water will suddenly become critical to human needs and, every time there is a water restriction, that pipe will still be full of that 75 gigalitres of water a year. I would stake my life on that. Yet, we have not heard one sound from this government. I must admit that I have raised it a number of times. I have asked questions in here but I have not had one of them answered. We have always had the answer, 'You are talking about a different project.'

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: You always get an answer.

Mr WILLIAMS: I did not say I did not get an answer: I said you have not answered the question, minister. There is a big difference, and that is the thing about spin, minister: you claim that you give an answer but you never answer the question, and you know that. The compromise that came out of the memorandum of understanding in March 2006, which was then backed up by the intergovernmental agreement on 3 July this year, missed the opportunity of maximising the political will that was out there across the nation, particularly amongst the voting public. The people in the western suburbs of Sydney for once in their life could see the Lower Lakes on their TV screens and ask, 'What the hell is going on? Why are we doing this? Why we are destroying the environment?' Suddenly there was some political will. That was squandered. But what about the money, the $10 billion? I think that has been increased. I think it is a bit over $13 billion.

Mr Pederick: $12.9 billion.

Mr WILLIAMS: $12.9 billion? In the order of $13 billion, but what is happening to that? A sum of $3 billion of that was earmarked to buy back water, as I said earlier, and that should have been a well-planned exercise—and I will come back to that in a moment—and the balance of it was principally to be used for works, for upgrading infrastructure. I remember the Premier warning us that most of that money would be spent in New South Wales and Victoria, that it would be spent upstream, and he said it was because that is where the problems are and that 'it is about gravity, stupid'. I remember the Premier saying that. If we fix the problems up there and save the water up there, it runs down the river into South Australia.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: He was actually quoting Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes, and that is what the Premier said. But he came back with $600 million of that $6 billion which he originally said was going to be spent upstream to fix problems, yet he has come back with $600 million of that to spend in South Australia for some fantastic projects. I am not too sure that they are going to put a huge amount of water back into the river. I do know that it would probably cost at least $6 billion to do the sort of work upstream that needs to be done to increase efficiencies.

Why would we want to increase efficiencies? Because that will allow us to continue to produce food, and I do not have to remind the house that 40 per cent of Australia's food production is within the greater Murray-Darling Basin. Increasing efficiency will allow us to continue to produce food; at the same time, we will have a much more efficient use of water and we will be able to send more water down the river. We will be able to increase the reliability of supply right across the system and we will be able to address the environmental issues. That is why you spend money on infrastructure.

We have a federal government now that is going to spend money on infrastructure, somewhere at some time, but in the meantime it is out there in an ad hoc way buying water licences. In the upstream states, there are a whole host of water licence products. I was told some years ago that, upstream from the South Australian border, you can buy no fewer than 83 different varieties of water products. It depends on which valley you are in and on the reliability of the water—a whole host of things. So, we have to recognise that, unlike South Australia, where we have one water product because we have one stream and we can extract the water anywhere in that stream and the reliability is basically the same north of Renmark as it used to be in the Lower Lakes, upstream it is not like that.

We have irrigation districts. Some are very efficient and some are less efficient, but most of them rely on delivery systems that are somewhat inefficient compared with what we have here in South Australia. If you were doing a buyback and were planning to upgrade infrastructure, I would have thought you would have a plan so that you do not plan to upgrade some infrastructure in one irrigation district and, as you start to spend the money, you say 'Woops! We inadvertently bought half the water out of that district and now we don't need the infrastructure because it is going to be too costly for those who are left to actually pay for the running costs.'

These are the sorts of things that you have to plan. They have to be done in a logical fashion, but that is not what we are seeing from the current government. What we are seeing is pork-barrelling with the $600 million which was earmarked for infrastructure upgrades. What we are seeing is an ad hoc buyback of water. We are seeing no planning and, if there is, there is no evidence of it.

In fact, the federal government got a great headline for buying out Toorale Station. Great headline, but what was the plan? My understanding is that they bought Toorale Station, but the water that now will not be harvested by that particular station may well be harvested by somebody else because the commonwealth does not have ownership of it. That is what has been put to me. I do not know whether it is right or not, but that is certainly what has been put to me.

I have spent a fair bit of time talking about the 'too little'. Let me just very briefly at this stage talk about what we will get if the parliament passes this measure that is before us—and I suspect that it will. The Murray-Darling Basin Commission will disappear and we will get the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. What will be the difference? The difference will be very little. We will have the same staff. The people actually sitting on the authority will possibly be different from those who were sitting on the commission but we will basically have the same staff, we will basically have the same functions and we will basically have them doing the same thing.

I do not have a problem with that. They will be responsible largely to the federal minister, but they will still maintain a fair bit of responsibility to the ministerial council and to the New Offices Committee, so it is still going to be a convoluted decision-making process—and I will get to that a little later. We will get a basin plan, and this is supposed to be the big win. I have some concerns about how much we will get out of the basin plan and I believe that parochialism will win the day.

This has been highlighted by the Premier and the minister: we will get water for critical human needs. For the first time in South Australia, we will be guaranteed water for critical human needs. This is where spin overcomes reality on a regular basis. We will not be provided with the water that will be pumped through the SA Water pipe network for critical human needs any more if this measure passes than we were previously.

There are two issues relating to critical human needs water that will flow down the river. One is the actual volume of water itself that SA Water can pump out, and in times of low flows South Australia will continue to have to find that water from its total allocation. South Australia will still be making decisions as to whether the water that is allocated to South Australia that year is used for critical human needs or irrigators or the environment. That will not change. What will change is that the authority will be charged with ensuring that the water, which will allow that volume of water that will be pumped by SA Water to flow through the river, will be provided as a first or highest priority. The river is maintained so that water can be delivered to supply critical human needs. That is the delivery component and that is already part of the system. We call it dilution flows.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: No, it's not.

Mr WILLIAMS: The minister says no, it is not. Out of South Australia's 1,850 gigalitres minimum entitlement, a certain portion is a dilution flow. A component of the water that comes into South Australia is known as the dilution flow.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: It's not enough.

Mr WILLIAMS: I know it is not enough. It is the dilution flow, the water that guarantees that we can get water of a suitable quality to our pumping stations, the last ones at Tailem Bend. That is what it is about: now it will be critical human needs conveyance water. It is nothing new.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: Good try, minister. You sit on a ministerial council, and you are trying to tell me that the ministerial council of today would allow the river to dry up between the Hume Reservoir and the South Australian border if water were there to be delivered to Adelaide and that that water would never get to Adelaide but would sit in the Hume Dam. Give me a break, minister. That is the way the river has been operated since at least 1914, since the first agreement was made.

We are formalising, but we are not instituting a situation where critical human needs water, the water that is actually in your taps, is being supplied by anyone new or anywhere other than the same place it comes from today—that is, out of South Australia's allocation—and it is for metropolitan Adelaide and all our country regions which rely on the river.

I remind the house that South Australia relies on the River Murray probably more than does any other state in the nation: 90 per cent of South Australians rely on the River Murray for their domestic water supply, and some 85 per cent of irrigation water is used on permanent plantings, which is much higher than in any other state.

One of the other things we will get out of this matter is that we will refer some powers to the commonwealth to give the ACCC a role, and I commend that. The ACCC will be involved in the process of establishing market rules and the charges the various operators can make throughout the system. I do not have a problem with that.

The reality is that COAG agreed to these things way back in 1994. That is why we had competition payments through the nineties. They were largely about the states meeting their obligations to those COAG agreements, and the one about water pricing and water charges was signed off by the states in 1994. Why do we have to have legislation to change it now? Because to some degree the states have ignored it. This is the point I keep making and coming back to: we have agreements, legislation and legal instruments that the states continue to ignore, and we are not really getting anything through this process that will change that.

We are told that from this we will have the opportunity for South Australia to carry over. Again, it is great that that will be formalised, but it is something we were able to do previously, albeit through negotiation. We carried over water last year, and I think we carried over some water the year before. How did we do that without this legislation? We had a ministerial council, we talked to the other people upstream and we said, 'By the way, your dams are empty. Do you mind if we save a bit of water in there?' The answer came back yes.

It will make it easier, I grant that, but this is not ground-breaking stuff. This is not really new. I guess this now begs the question of the government: now that it has access to the upstream storages—and I believe that we will have access to the rate of some 300 gigalitres (probably South Australia's requirement for a year and a half)—will the government still be wanting to double the capacity of the storages in the Hills? Will we still be spending at least $1 billion doubling the size of Mount Bold or building a new dam somewhere else in the hills? Will this government still be creating new storages down here where the evaporation rate is much greater than it is in the Hume and Dartmouth areas? It begs that question. We have in the past been able to negotiate that position; now it will be relatively formalised, but does it mean that we still have to build new storages here in Adelaide?

Again, the tabled text amends the Murray-Darling Basin agreement and we will have a different system to recognise low flows and a three-tiered system: tier 1 will recognise normal conditions and flows; tier 2 will be lower flows; and tier 3 will be extreme low flows. Those situations will trigger certain parts of the agreement and set in train certain processes. A lot of that work is yet to be done. From my reading of the document that was tabled, it basically sets out the process of how we will take the next step to work out how we will do it when the time arrives.

I remind the house about the 'too late' aspect. For goodness sake, the Water Act 2007 is called that because it was passed in 2007. We are almost at the end of 2008 and we have been so anxious to get on with this that we have had people working away in the back rooms on how to do it. I will go through the document in a while and point out the sort of processes that will be foisted upon us because the work has not been done.

The legislative process before us today is an interesting one. The only thing the state government of South Australia has done quickly with regard to the water situation in South Australia in the almost seven years it has been in power is to bring this bill to the house. It is now moving with incredible haste and we are being asked to use a process that is totally unfamiliar to the house, with incredible haste, on a very important matter. That is the only thing that this government has done in haste with regard to water. Everything else it has done has been done at a snail's pace or slower.

The bill contains a mere seven clauses, but the minister tabled a very large document, some 304 pages, in the last sitting week. It was great: I got a briefing on it last Thursday, giving me a huge amount of time to get my head around it!

Mr Griffiths: Lucky you are clever.

Mr WILLIAMS: I thank my colleague. The process is that we have tabled a text which contains amendments that the commonwealth government proposes to make to the Water Act 2007. I understand it contains an amended version or a new version of the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement. It contains a couple of other schedules which refer to some other matters, including amendments to commonwealth acts, and some transitional provisions.

All the detail about where we are going and what we are doing is in the 304-page document. None of the detail about what the government's situation will look like is in the bill before us. All that the bill does is enable us to shift the powers needed for the commonwealth government to make those amendments—that is all that the bill does in seven clauses. It enables the commonwealth to make some changes. It enables the commonwealth, principally, to disband the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and rename it the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and make it responsible, by and large, to the federal minister.

The haste with which we are expected to pass this legislation is indecent. The minister came to me earlier this morning and said that she wants to get this bill through both houses this week. That is the way that the government wants to do it and the government has put itself into that position. I remind the house of my comment about 'too late'. This government has squandered something like 18 months—with no haste whatsoever—and now got itself into a position where it hopes to debate this major change—at least in its mind it is major—in both houses this week. I think that is indecent. It denies members of this parliament the opportunity and the right to look clause by clause at the tabled text. I guarantee without fear of contradiction that very few members in the house have read the 304-page document.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: They should have.

Mr WILLIAMS: The minister says that they should have. I think the minister is being ridiculous. She knows very well that none of her colleagues have read it. I wonder whether the minister has read it word for word.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald: Have you read it?

Mr WILLIAMS: I have, indeed.

The Hon. K.A. MAYWALD: Word for word?

Mr WILLIAMS: Word for word. I will confess that I skipped fairly rapidly through the parts of the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement which have not changed, but I have read the rest of it word for word, and markings and highlightings are in my copy.

I will spend a little time looking at the bill because the house deserves an understanding of how the bill works, and I wish to spend time on some matters in the tabled text, which highlight the argument I am making, in order to highlight the problems I foresee. I refer to clause 3 of the bill which provides:

Commonwealth Water Act instrument means any instrument (whether or not of a legislative character) that is made or issued under the commonwealth Water Act.

I would be somewhat surprised if anyone in the house understood the effect of that, and I will confess that I am not too sure that I do—'(whether or not of a legislative character)'. Does that mean that, under that definition, a commonwealth instrument is a disallowable instrument; or are we giving the minister, the ministerial council, the officers group, or anyone else power to make law which will not be reviewed even by the commonwealth parliament? That is the question that arose in my mind when I read that and I draw it to the attention of the house. There are some lawyers in the house, and I hope that those with legal training might apply their knowledge to that. I hope that the minister in her summing up might address my curiosity on that particular point or we will have to draw attention to it at the committee stage.

I skip forward to clause 4, which refers the powers to the commonwealth. This is the tricky bit because it does it in two ways. It refers the powers which are anticipated by the tabled text; that is, the amendments it is expected the commonwealth parliament will make. By studying those amendments and going back and conferring with the principal act, we can get a reasonable understanding of what powers we are transferring through that process. That is noted in the clause as 'the initial referred provisions'. We have given the commonwealth the power to make those amendments to the Water Act. We then also give the commonwealth further powers to make further amendments in the future to the commonwealth Water Act 2007, but we do restrict what parts of the act can be amended, and we restrict it to what is known in clause 3 as 'referred subject matters'.

There is a list of the subject matters to which we are referring power to the commonwealth government and to which it can address amendments in the future. They are reasonably limited and they are within the areas that have been contemplated; that is, those restricted areas about which I have talked earlier. We are not handing carte blanche to the commonwealth powers to manage the river system: we are restricting it to those powers about which I have spoken and about which I will speak again as I go through the tabled text.

Clause 5 gives us the opportunity to terminate the reference. Again, there are two steps that this parliament may choose to take some time in the future. We may choose to terminate the whole process outright and say, 'We no longer allow you to have those powers that allowed you to make those original amendments to the Water Resources Act,' or we may take a second step and say, 'All we are going to terminate is the additional power which allowed you to make additional amendments as time goes by regarding the referred subject matters.' Clause 6 discusses the effect of making a termination of that second part of the process and how it works. Obviously if we terminate that second part of the process after it has already been used, the question arises, is the matter that has been amended legal or not? How that works is set out in clause 6.

Clause 7 is an evidential clause, which provides that the Clerk of the House of Assembly of the South Australian parliament will be obliged to hold and be able to produce a copy of the tabled text and that, under certification by the Clerk, it will be taken to be a genuine copy. That is all the bill does. The old saying refers to the devil being in the detail and that is exactly where it is. I will refer to a number of matters in the tabled text and bring them to the attention of members because, as I said (and I stand by it), I suspect that very few members will have taken the opportunity to read it.

The tabled text contains schedule 1, which sets out the amendments that are proposed to be made to the commonwealth act and the upgraded or amended Murray-Darling Basin Agreement (the latest iteration of that agreement). Schedule 2 contains some other amendments which repeal the Murray-Darling Basin Act 1993 and makes amendments to other commonwealth acts, including the Legislative Instruments Act 2003, the Trade Practices Act 1974 and the Water Act 2007. Schedule 3 contains the transitional provisions to allow it to move, among other things, and obviously one of the important parts is the transition of the staff from the commission to the authority.

Most of the meat, I guess, is in schedule 1, which contains the amending clauses to the commonwealth act and I will briefly touch on some of them. The first amendment (18D), inserts a new clause, which provides:

A protocol made by the authority under a schedule to the agreement is a legislative instrument, but neither section 42 (disallowance) nor part 6 (sunsetting) of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 applies to the protocol.

I again refer to the matter that I raised a few minutes ago. Does that mean that a protocol made by the authority is a disallowable instrument, or does it not? From my reading of the document I cannot work out the effect of that. I must admit, although I did a fair amount of reading over the past weekend, I did not go to the website and download the commonwealth Legislative Instruments Act and read that, so I confess that my homework has not been complete.

I move on to new section 86A, part 2A, 'Critical human water needs'. The act will have a clause inserted here that states:

(a) that critical human water needs are the highest priority water use for communities who are dependent on basin water resources; and

(b) in particular that, to give effect to this priority in the River Murray system, conveyance water will receive first priority from the water available in the system.

As I have said, that is what South Australia knows as dilution flows.

New section 86B talks about the basin plan to provide for critical human water needs. The basin plan needs to stipulate exactly what the critical human water needs are for each state, including how much water needs to be available for critical human needs. Subsection (1) provides:

(b) include a statement of the amount of conveyance water required to deliver the water referred to in paragraph (a).

So it is clearly a separation between the critical human water needs—the water that comes out of your tap—and the water to convey that water through the river system.

I am at pains to ensure that everyone in the house understands that there are two parts to it and that the part that will be guaranteed by legislation is the conveyance, not the water that is going to come out of your tap. That still has to be found by South Australia from its allocation. I think that is important, because the spin we have been hearing has tended to cloud that.

New section 86D concerns matters relating to tier 2 water sharing arrangements. It talks about how the triggers will work when we go into low flow conditions and what will happen. One thing I am pleased to learn is that under these conditions some of the upstream tributaries will also be taken into consideration, particularly with regard to providing conveyance water. That is something new, and I know that people in South Australia have been calling for that for many years. Basically, my understanding of this is that, in significantly low flow circumstances, water from most tributaries can also be used to meet the highest priority of providing for conveyance water. However, I need to point out that new section 86D(3) provides:

The arrangements referred to in paragraph (1)(d) [about critical human needs] must:

(a) recognise South Australia's right, as provided for in clauses 91 and 130 of the Agreement, to store its entitlement to water—

so it is recognised that South Australia will have a right to the upstream storages, and—

(b) recognise that each of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia is responsible for meeting the critical human needs of that state, and will decide how water from its share is used.

That is the crux of what I have been saying: South Australia is responsible for finding the actual water that will be supplied for critical human needs—the water that will come out of the taps. Let us not get sucked into believing that we have something new here. We are formalising a process that has occurred for many years.

I come back to the point about having an independent authority charged with making decisions. New section 86F (emergency responses to the reaching of trigger points) sets out the process. It provides:

(1) If a water quality trigger point or salinity trigger point referred to in paragraph 86B(1)(c) is reached, the Authority must—

this is the independent authority that is charged with making decisions—

(a) in consultation with the Basin Officials Committee, formulate an emergency response to ensure that water in the River Murray system that is available to meet critical human needs is returned to a state suitable for meeting critical human water needs; and

(b) subject to subsection (2), take the action necessary to implement the emergency response.

New subsection (2) provides:

The authority must not take any action under paragraph (1)(b) [that I have just read] that affects state water sharing arrangements or Border Rivers water sharing arrangements unless the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council has agreed to the action.

This is the independent authority, and this highlights its independence. Even under an emergency response situation, it must consult with the Basin Officials Committee and it cannot take any actions unless the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council has agreed to the action. I may come to it, but I will tell the house now that the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council agrees only by unanimous vote. The authority, by dint of section 86F (the emergency response), can act under an emergency situation only if every state agrees. This is the brand new independent authority. Remember, this is the one that was going to be like the Reserve Bank—independent; making decisions without fear or favour.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: The Reserve Bank does not consult with the federal Treasurer when it is about to make a decision regarding interest rates, minister, and you know that very well. If we go through it, time after time we have similar sort of language. We have this plethora of organisations. We have the Basin Officials Committee, we have the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council and we have the authority. There is an incredible process of consultation between those three groups with veto powers all the way through—peppered all through this document—which really takes away the authority from the authority. This is an example of the sort of thing.

New section 93 is headed, 'Process for making water charge rules', and this is repeated in many instances through the document. The minister asked the ACCC for advice about making water charge rules. New subsection (7) provides:

If:

(a) the minister makes, amends or revokes water charge rules;

and

(b) the rules do not reflect the advice that the ACCC gave the minister under subsection (2) in relation to the rules, or the amendments or revocations;

the minister must, when the rules, amendments or revocations are laid before a house of the parliament under the Legislative Instruments Act 2002, also lay before the house a document that sets out:

(c) the respects in which the rules, amendments or revocations do not reflect the advice given by the ACCC; and

(d) the minister's reasons for departing from that advice.

Just imagine, minister, the Reserve Bank saying last week, 'We're going to give a 1 per cent reduction in interest rates. That is my advice to the federal Treasurer.' And the federal Treasurer and the Prime Minister say, 'Oh, no, you're not. You're going to give a 1.5 per cent reduction in the interest rates, and this is the reason' (and table it in the parliament). That is the difference between the Reserve Bank Board and this sham authority that we will have under your legislation.

That is just the process for making water charge rules. It is the exact same processes for water market rules. I will not read them all out again, but it is the exact same processes. I think that pretty well gets me through the matters in the amendments part of the tabled text I wanted to raise. I will move now to the amended Murray-Darling Basin Agreement. We have set up a new ministerial council. I am not quite sure how much different it is to the old ministerial council. I do know that it retains most of its powers. It includes clause 9, functions of the ministerial council, paragraph (d), which states:

to agree upon amendments to this agreement including amendments to, or removal or addition of, schedules to this agreement as the Ministerial Council considers desirable from time to time.

So, it is the ministerial council that reserves to itself the power to amend the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement. It is a power that it has had for a very long time, but the authority is on the outer there. The Murray-Darling Basin Agreement has been, and will remain, the major document which governs the way that we manage the river system. The ministerial council will retain the power. As I said earlier, clause 13, proceedings of the ministerial council, subclause (6) states:

A resolution before the Ministerial Council will be carried only by a unanimous vote of all ministers present who constitute a quorum.

That is why the opposition has been saying all along, ever since the MOU back in March, that this government is not serious about referring powers, because it is retaining the veto power. That has been the problem for the past 100-plus years, and it will continue to be the problem as we go forward.

The Murray-Darling Basin Agreement—and I do not think this has changed—sets out the various states' entitlements to water. South Australia's entitlement is set out in a table, and I do not expect that that has changed, but it does raise a question, in my mind at least—and I did raise this with the minister's officers who briefed me last week. I am not too sure that I got an answer that satisfied my curiosity, but South Australia's share is expressed in a volumetric way, whereas the shares of Victoria and New South Wales are expressed as, basically, half of everything else that is left over.

The reality is that the minister claims that the basin plan is going to institute caps, and I will talk about that in a few minutes. If the basin plan institutes caps and that results in a reduction in the amount of water that Victoria and/or New South Wales can extract by way of diversion from any part of the river system, is South Australia guaranteed to retain its notional 1,850 gigalitres? If New South Wales and Victoria are forced to take a reduction of, say, 10 per cent, 15 per cent or 20 per cent, what will be the impact on South Australia's share, which is expressed in different terminology? I have not received an answer to that and I am hoping that the minister, in her summing up, can satisfy my curiosity on that matter.

As I have said, I understand it has been in the agreement for a long time that New South Wales and Victoria basically share all the water in the system, apart from the 1,850 gigalitres that comes to South Australia. That is highlighted in clause 94, entitlements of New South Wales and Victoria, subclause (1), as follows:

Except as otherwise expressly provided in subdivision D of this division—

subdivision D is all about the sharing between Victoria and New South Wales; it is not about the quantum—

and subject to South Australia's entitlement under clause 88 or 90, New South Wales and Victoria are each entitled to use—

and then paragraphs (a), (b), (c), (d), etc., basically say that all of the water left is equally shared. So, the amended agreement that we are being asked to agree to, through this process of passing the bill before us, basically states that New South Wales and Victoria each continues to take half of the water that is left. The minister may be able to tell me how I am so wrong on that. I hope I am.

With regard to South Australia's storage rights, this is where I am talking about it being too late. Where have the government and the minister been? As I said, John Howard started this process at the beginning of 2007 when he said, over 18 months ago, that they wanted to change the governance arrangements, they wanted to do it better and they wanted to get it right. The minister has come out and said many times that we now have access to the storages upstream, but you have to ask what the government has been doing in those 18 months when you look at the clause in the Murray-Darling Basin agreement that gives us access to that storage. Obviously, South Australia has wanted formalised access to that storage for many years (I do not know how many times I have heard that in meetings), but clause 130 of the amended agreement provides, under 'Accounting for South Australia's Storage Rights' (and I will read this through, because it just shows how ill prepared we are at this stage):

(1) The authority [this is this new, independent authority] must, as soon as practical after this agreement comes into effect, prepare a draft schedule to this agreement in accordance with this clause.

(2) The authority must provide the draft schedule to the committee.

(3) After considering the draft schedule, the committee must submit the draft schedule and the committee's advice in relation to it, to the Ministerial Council.

(4) After receiving the draft schedule and the advice of the committee, the Ministerial Council may:

(a) approve the schedule with or without amendment; or

(b) refer the draft schedule back to the authority for further consideration.

That was this independent body that was going to stop all this nonsense of buck-passing and blame-sharing. It was going to cut to the chase and it was going to make decisions based on good science. That is the process. This is just to set up a protocol to account for the water that South Australia might wish to put into those upstream storages. Paragraph (5) provides:

When the schedule is approved by the Ministerial Council under paragraph (4)(a) it:

(a) becomes part of the agreement; and

(b) takes effect…

What a convoluted process. Again, I will not labour the point by continually reading similar sorts of provisions in this agreement, but that is what happens. We have this very hastily put together tabled text process, because this government and the federal government choose to play games.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: No; I do not want you to take another 100 years. I would have thought seven years—for most of which we have been in drought. I remind the minister that it was her Premier who spoke to the National Press Club back in February 2003—five years ago—and said that we had to change the way we do things, that we had to reduce Adelaide's reliance on the River Murray. That was in February 2003, and now he says that they want to build another dam to make sure that we can stay reliant on the River Murray.

The Premier said that we have to do something about stormwater harvesting, yet in seven years we have done nothing about it. He says that we have to do something about the governance arrangements and the way that we manage the river system. Yet here we have the minister, in great haste, rushing this very important matter though both houses of parliament this week, when she has had all these years.

This document is full of those sorts of processes, so we are to adopt a document that says it is a plan to develop a plan. That is what it is: it is a plan to develop a plan. This whole process is more about spin than it is about substance, which is where I started.

The Hon. K.A. Maywald interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: If the minister had been listening much earlier in the contribution, she would have heard that I said we would be supporting it. As I said earlier, the problem with this bill and the tabled text is not what it contains but what it does not contain. That is what I am trying to point out to the house: that when you read what is in this document you find that it is quite different from the press releases coming out of the minister's office; it is quite different from what the Premier has been saying on taxpayer-funded TV and radio commercials—which, I might say, are an absolute waste of taxpayers' funds and an absolute abuse by the executive government of this state.

I understand that the Premier takes taxpayers' money to do that sort of thing because he cannot stand up in front of the media and political journalists and give a good story about actually achieving anything—because he has not achieved it—so he resorts to taking taxpayers' money to make a political advertisement and gets his face on television on a nightly basis. It is a disgrace; nothing less.

I turn now to the basin plan. The government and the minister have hung their hat on this basin plan. I think I have been making the point that there is some urgency. The basin plan will not come into effect until 2011 which is three years away. Where has the government been? I will bring some more evidence about that to the attention of the house in a moment. The basin plan is supposed to be the be-all and end-all of this process and that is why we have this authority. One would say that is why this authority should, indeed, be independent.

That is what the opposition has been saying for some time: cede the powers so that we can have a fully independent authority and we do not have all this nonsense of a ministerial council retaining veto powers and frustrating the development of a real system to manage the river so that it delivers for those who rely on it, critical human needs, irrigators and the environment—not necessarily in that order. That is what we need but we are not getting it.

Schedule 2 contains a further amendment to the Water Act, new section 43A—Authority to seek comments from the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council on a proposed plan. I will go through this but I will not read it all out. This highlights the nonsense about an independent authority. Subsection (4) states that the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council must, within six weeks after the authority complied with subsection (2)—which is drafting the plan—give the authority a written notice either saying that the ministerial council agrees with the plan or stating that it does not agree or that, at least, any one of its members does not agree.

If the Murray-Darling Basin council gives the authority a notice that states that it does not agree, the authority must first, consider the matters and, secondly, undertake such consultations in relation to the matters as the authority considers necessary or appropriate and either confirm the original plan or alter the proposed plan. Then the authority, which supposedly has all this power, must prepare a document that summarises the submissions and how to address those submissions, etc.

The Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council—again, after receiving the subsequent document—has another go. Within three weeks, the ministerial council can agree or disagree and, if it does not agree, it goes to the federal minister. This is where the decision is actually made and this is the process. This is the part that was in the act prior to any of these amendments. Under clause 44 of the principal act, 'the minister may adopt the basin plan'. Subclause (3) provides:

Within 30 days after the authority gives the minister a version of the basin plan under subsection (2), the minister—

(a) must consider that version of the basin plan and the views given to the minister under subsection (2); and

(b) must either adopt in writing that version of the plan, or direct the authority in writing to make modifications to that version of the basin plan and give it to the minister for adoption.

(4) A direction under subparagraph (3)(b)(ii)—

which is the one I just read out—

is not a legislative instrument.

I read that to mean that it is not a legislative instrument, it is not subject to the Legislative Instruments Act, and therefore is not disallowable. It is made by the minister, there is no review of that directive, and it is binding. Subclause (6) provides:

If the minister give the direction under subparagraph (3)(b)(ii)—

(a) the authority must comply with the direction; and

(b) the minister must adopt, in writing, the basin plan given to the minister in compliance with the direction.

So, if the minister does not like it, he gives a direction and the authority must comply with that direction and give the amended plan back to the minister, and the minister must then adopt it. That is not—I repeat, not—the way the Reserve Bank works.

The minister is suggesting that I should read the Reserve Bank Act. I repeat: that is not the way the Reserve Bank works. The Reserve Bank is charged with the obligation of making decisions, and they are not reviewable by the minister and they are not subject to a direction by the minister. The Reserve Bank makes its decisions based on good scientific work and analysis, just as the authority that will supposedly have authority over the river should be running. Subclause (7) provides:

When the basin plan is laid before the house of parliament under the Legislative Instruments Act 2003, the minister must also lay before the house a document that sets out—

(a) any direction the minister gave under subparagraph (3)(b)(ii) in relation to the basin plan; and

(b) the minister's reasons for giving that direction.

The Premier, in answer to a question that we posed to him in the house one day, said that that would prevent the minister of the day from doing anything which would not be in South Australia's interests. I am paraphrasing what he said, but the reality is that we have had ministers and governments upstream doing things for 100 years that have not been in South Australia's interests, and I do not expect that to change. I do not expect it to change in the near future, in the mid-term or in the longer term, when the only powers that we are giving are those set out in this tabled text. The reality is that we have shirked our responsibility.

The house may be happy to hear that I am coming to the end of my contribution, but I just want to reinforce my cynicism. I have with me a copy of The Weekly Times, a rural publication from Victoria, dated Wednesday 3 September. There is a large picture on the front page with the heading, 'Water grab leaves southern irrigators...DAMNED'. The story is about new dams being constructed in the Moree district in New South Wales. It is about one landowner who is doubling the capacity of his dams to 11,400 megalitres. He has two old dams. One had 250 megalitres, which has been increased to 1,400 megalitres, and one had a 750 megalitre capacity, which has been increased to a 4,000 megalitre capacity. This was done this year—a couple of months ago—as we are all running around signing intergovernmental agreements saying that we have fixed the problem. The article in TheWeekly Times states:

The Murray-Darling Basin Commission's Independent Audit Group estimates Queensland and NSW irrigators have increased the capacity of their on-farm storages by at least 1.6 million megalitres [that is, 1,600 gigalitres] since the interstate cap on diversions was signed in 1995.

Way back in 1995, the basin states—New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland—agreed that they would put a cap on water diversions. What they agreed to do was put a cap on surface water diversions. They ignored ground water diversions. Notwithstanding that, we have had what is called floodplain harvesting, where people are diverting millions and millions of litres (thousands of gigalitres) of water before it even gets into the rivers, and they are doing it with impunity.

The same farmer apparently built a 6,000 megalitre dam in 2003-04. He has been carrying out what we call unregulated floodplain harvesting for the past 10 years, since that cap was put on. The article goes on to state:

The development appears to fly in the face of NSW's commitments to halt floodplain developments and cap diversions at 1994 levels.

Despite that cap at 1993-94 levels, the New South Wales government managed to introduce its floodplain harvesting policy only in July this year. It has been only since July this year that that floodplain harvesting has been regulated. In terms of the floodplain harvesters—these people who are building huge dams—there is no metering or monitoring.

Interestingly enough, the New South Wales water minister said that what this farmer is doing is all right because it is based on the existing regulated river licence for which approval had been granted in 2005. The water minister in New South Wales at the time that article was written is now the New South Wales Premier, Nathan Rees. Why am I cynical? Well, he reckons it is okay for New South Wales farmers to continue to double the size of their dams and to continue to harvest floodwaters across that state.

Some time ago I was fortunate enough to be at a function where a number of speakers were talking about water. One of them from the CSIRO drew my attention to a particular document entitled 'Projections of groundwater extraction rates and implications for future demand and competition for surface water'. I go back to the comment I made a moment ago that in June 1995 the basin states agreed to cap surface water diversions to the 1993-94 levels. This document was produced in 2003 and highlights the fact that states have abused the agreement of 1995 by licensing ground water extractions. The document states:

In June 1995, in response to declining river health coupled with an incremental erosion of the security of supply to existing irrigators, the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council decided to introduce a cap on the diversion of water from the basin's river system.

We will continue to have a Murray-Darling Basin council, and it will retain a whole heap of powers, as I have been pointing out. But, way back in 1995 it said that we will have a cap on diversions. I have just seen how much notice the now Premier of New South Wales (the previous New South Wales water minister) has taken of that. He would have sat on that ministerial council; he was taking the 1995 agreement pretty seriously.

The introduction of the cap was seen as an essential first step in establishing management systems to achieve healthy rivers and sustainable consumptive uses.

That was in 1995. Continuing:

The cap is a key policy decision to support the goal of the Murray-Darling Basin initiative 'to promote and coordinate effective planning and management for the equitable, efficient and sustainable use of the water, land and other environmental resources of the Murray-Darling Basin'.

The Murray-Darling Basin Commission had a review of that 1995 agreement in 2000 and went on to make this comment:

The cap has been an essential first step in providing for environmental sustainability of the river system of the basin. Without the cap there would have been significantly increased risk that the environmental degradation of the river system of the Murray-Darling Basin would have been worse. However, the MDBC recognises that there is no certainty that the cap on diversions at its current level represents a sustainable level of diversions.

So, for all these years later (eight years), we have been thinking that we are going to change something, but all of those veto powers have been left with the Murray-Darling Basin ministers' group and, as I have just pointed out, the Premier of New South Wales was one of the members involved in that that ministerial council. I reiterate that I am cynical.

As I said earlier, I have some doubts that the buyback of 1,500 gigalitres will be enough. One of the reasons I have for that (and one of the things that was highlighted when my attention was drawn to this document) is that the groundwater extractions occurring on the banks and adjacent to streams right throughout the basin are having an impact (and in some cases it is quite delayed) on stream flows. Of course, if you pump water out of the groundwater and it is a system where that groundwater is entering into the river via leakage from the aquifer, that is contributing to stream flows. If it is the other way around—that is, water flowing out of the river (and when we talk about river losses, this one of them) into the groundwater—and you extract that water from the groundwater system, you actually increase that flow out of the river. So, there is a direct impact between groundwater extractions and river flows. In many cases, the impact is somewhat delayed. The 2003 document states:

Groundwater extractions are currently estimated as reducing stream flows since 1993-94 by 186 GL/y.

What that is saying is that the delayed impact in the period from 1993-94 (and that is the base where the ministerial council was setting the cap for surface water extractions) to 2003 was estimated at 186 gigalitres a year.

This document goes on to say that, if we allow this to continue, by 2050 that would increase to 700 gigalitres a year the reduction in stream flows. That is not accounting for the amount of groundwater that has been pumped: this is in addition to that, and this is the impact that it is having on stream flows. That is why it is important that we understand the interrelationship and why it is important that a cap is put on the total extractions. That is why the basin plan is important, and that is why I am so cynical about what we will achieve through the basin plan process because of the lack of powers we are giving to the authority. Recommendation 1 of this document—and, as I said, this was way back in 2003, just after the Premier of this state made that now infamous speech to the National Press Club—states:

The States should reduce groundwater allocations (and consequently, groundwater use) to sustainable yield levels...

Recommendation 2 states:

In the short term, groundwater should be accounted for within the spirit of the cap.

That is the information that was given to the ministerial council in 2003—only five years ago—and nothing has happened. In fact, that is not right; we cannot say nothing has happened because it has continued to get worse. When that advice was given in 2003, we were just entering the drought, but the drought has continued to get worse. I think that the rainfall in Victoria in September of this year was the lowest on record. We can expect that inflows will continue to get lower.

We are in a situation where we need to change what we are doing, and that is why the opposition for many months now has been pleading with this government to get it right, to have a real transfer of powers and a real independent authority which does not have to go cap in hand to the ministerial council or minister, which does not have to amend its work at the whim of the federal minister, and which is not subject to petty politics.

Members might say that politics will not interfere because this is so important. I have already reminded the house of the political delays—the 'too late' bit of the 'too little too late'—that occurred in the eight or nine months between January/February of 2007 and the November election. Base politics were at work then, and base politics will continue to work. Water is worth a lot of money to the various states. How we react may well determine a large part of our state's economy as we go forward. Even today the Victorian government in The Age has announced an extra $150 million relief for farmers in that state. They are giving $58 million in water rate rebates for irrigators, $20 million for employment programs and building infrastructure in small towns, and $15 million to provide a 50 per cent subsidy on council rates and charges for farmers.

What we have in South Australia is an exit strategy. We have a strategy that says that we have given up, we cannot guarantee. We have a strategy whereby the government has said we have failed to get an independent authority and we cannot guarantee that you are going to get an equal share. Whilst irrigators along some parts of the river with high security water have 100 per cent of their allocation, our irrigators with permanent plantings have 11 per cent, and this government has said to those irrigators, 'We cannot guarantee your future. The best we can do for you is guarantee you some money if you pull your crops out of the ground.' It is a sad day for South Australia. We have missed an opportunity. It is too little. It is too late.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr O'Brien.


[Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00]


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