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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-10-28 Daily Xml
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MURRAY-DARLING BASIN

135 Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite—Leader of the Opposition) (30 September 2008). How much pressure is the state government putting on the federal government to use its authority to stop or buy back the allocation of water for the growing of cotton and rice in the Murray-Darling Basin?

The Hon. K.A. MAYWALD (Chaffey—Minister for the River Murray, Minister for Water Security): The South Australian government has been actively and assertively pursuing a better deal for the River Murray over many years. SA was the first jurisdiction to cap our extractions from the river in 1969. The rest of the basin followed suit in the 1990’s.

The SA government has lead the way in advocating for the purchase of water from willing sellers for return to the river (which until January 2007 was opposed by federal and other jurisdictions). We successfully negotiated the Living Murray Initiative first step to recover 500 gigalitres of water for environmental flows for the river by 2009. SA's target is to recover 35 of the 500 gigalitres by June 2009, and we will achieve this, mainly through the purchase of water from willing sellers.

In negotiating the new Intergovernmental Agreement on Murray-Darling Basin Reform, the SA government not only took the lead and successfully negotiated a new independent Murray-Darling Basin Authority that will develop a basin wide plan that will set new sustainable diversion limits (caps) on surface and groundwater extraction from each valley in the basin. We have strongly encouraged the federal government to purchase water from willing sellers in the basin to address long-standing overallocation issues, particularly in upstream catchments.

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