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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-10-28 Daily Xml
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NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN

Mr RAU (Enfield) (11:17): I move:

That the 35th report of the committee, entitled Water Resource Management in the Murray-Darling Basin, Volume 2, 'The Two Rivers...', be noted.

In moving this motion I will again be very brief. The parliament is probably aware that a reference was provided to the Natural Resources Committee by the other place for us to inquire into matters relating to the River Murray. Since that reference was provided we have travelled extensively throughout the length of the river and have been trying to wrap our heads collectively around all the complex issues that exist in relation to the River Murray, its present difficulties and what the future might hold for both the river and all the communities (including, of course, Adelaide) that are dependent on the health and continuing viability of that river.

This is the second of what we anticipate to be three reports on that, and it really deals with some of our more recent inquiries. If members have an interest in the river (and I am sure most do), I would urge them to at least cast their eye over the report. It contains quite a lot of information and explains the different community groups and individuals with whom we have met over the course of our examinations. Much of the material contained in this volume of the report comes from inspections that occurred in South Australia, and again I would like to acknowledge the local members who assisted us in relation to that matter: the member for Hammond, the member for Chaffey and I think also again the member for Finniss, who seems to be popping up all over our activities throughout South Australia.

There is no doubt, as members would be aware, that irrigators and communities in South Australia are suffering terribly as a result of the plight of the river. Unfortunately (and I say this in all sincerity), there is no easy, quick fix to this problem. I know I have said this before, but this is a problem that goes back more than 100 years and it involves several state jurisdictions behaving as if the river was their own; as if it began and ended within their own jurisdiction and they could do with it as they wished. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and successive governments in various states have over-allocated water in a way that was completely unsustainable, even had the normal climatic conditions continued indefinitely. Now it appears that we are, at the very least, in one of the periodic dry episodes that occur in Australia. The last one was in the 1940s and the one before that was around the time of Federation.

If we are really lucky, that is what we are dealing with now. If we are not really lucky, we are dealing with a climatic shift that will see the whole river system operate under an environment of increased temperature and decreased rainfall, which has never previously had to be dealt with. So, the most optimistic point of view—and I guess you would have to be a climate change sceptic to have this point of view—is that we are probably in for a few more bad years and after that if we are lucky it will get back to where it was. If you are not a climate change sceptic, we are probably seeing the shape of things to come, and that means urgent action needs to be taken across the board.

I would say—and I am speaking here for myself, not the committee, because the members of the committee can form their own views about this—but for myself I am coming to the view increasingly that until the federal government uses some sort of coercive powers or lightens up on the carrots and beefs up on the sticks we will wind up with an unsatisfactorily long and protracted attempt to solve this problem.

We only have to look at the behaviour of, in particular, the Victorian government over the last few years and its imposition of caps and various other things to see that the spirit, if not the black letter law, of the intergovernmental agreements is being flouted really. That is unsatisfactory, not just because I am a South Australian and not just because I care about what happens down here; it is unsatisfactory as an Australian to have one group within our community taking advantage of their territorial jurisdiction to disadvantage people who are their fellow citizens of this country. It is completely unsatisfactory. New South Wales does not get off entirely scot-free either, because there are things that are going on there which have not been helpful.

And, of course, let us not forget Queensland, although in relation to Queensland I have to say that we, as South Australians, are not being directly greatly prejudiced by Queensland because whatever they are taking up there, by the time it got down here, it would be a fraction of what it is up there. There may be knock-on effects there, but the point remains the same: this is a national problem, it requires a national solution, and parochial views about this are unacceptable and will lead to outcomes that are unacceptable and unsustainable.

Unfortunately, there is no good news about this. I know that the member for Hammond, in particular, has worked very hard for people in his community and has been a great advocate for the people of his community and that he genuinely feels the anguish and pain that those people have been going through. For what it is worth, he has been able to convey very well to the committee, through the people that he has introduced us to and his own advocacy before the committee, the depth and the extent of that misery.

All of us on the committee are aware of it, but I say to the member for Hammond and to his constituents and to all the other South Australians who are suffering here: please remember, if there was an easy way to fix this, if there was a switch somebody could throw, if there was a pipe somebody could put in or turn off or turn on, it would have been done. If it was within the jurisdictional control of the South Australian parliament, it would have been done.

Leaving aside party politics, would any premier of this state—Labor, Liberal or Independent, or whatever—deliberately advocate or sustain or persist in policies that denied members of his own community the opportunity of having a viable living? The answer to that is obviously no. Would any premier of this state or any government of this state permit people living in Adelaide to be concerned about whether or not they would have water for critical human needs? The answer is that of course they would not, no matter who they were.

This is a terribly complex problem—it has no simple, easy, short-term solution—but the more informed we all are about the nature and extent of this problem, the greater the chance that some real progress will be made. As I said in opening, for those members who are interested in this issue—and I expect most people are to one degree or another—I would really urge them at least to cast their eye over this report and consider some of its implications.

In case I do not say anything at the end of this part of the debate, I would again like to thank the committee staff, Knut and Patrick, who have done an excellent job supporting members of the committee in this matter. Of course, none of this would be possible without the tremendous collegiate spirit that has existed in this committee throughout the whole period of this parliament, and I would again like to thank all my parliamentary colleagues here in this chamber and our colleagues in the other place.

It really has been a very cooperative, positive experience to be involved in the work of this committee. We have been lucky enough to have members on this committee who have had many years' experience in this parliament. In fact, I think the collective experience in this parliament of members of the committee if we take just one of them is 40 years. Just imagine that: 40 years in one person, and that is just the beginning.

An honourable member: That's your future.

Mr RAU: I don't want to go down that track, but I have to say that it has been a great experience. I really am very pleased and proud to have been able to participate in the work of the committee, and I am very pleased to be able to say in all sincerity that the cooperative nature of the way in which the committee has operated and the wealth of experience that each member has brought to the committee has been invaluable. I commend the report to the house.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:28): I, too, rise to make a contribution on the report entitled, Water Resource Management in the Murray-Darling Basin, Volume 2: The Two Rivers.

Mr Venning: Pretty name!

Mr PEDERICK: They come up with some very good names in the Natural Resources Committee. I just want to go over the committee's findings. The committee's finding No. 1 is that buying Cubbie Station would be of little if any practical benefit to South Australia; and finding No. 2 is:

Our best hopes for water security lie in the Murray system. Over-emphasis on the Darling system, especially the Upper Darling, as a solution for our water troubles is to raise false hopes.

I acknowledge the chair of the committee, the member for Enfield, for his work with local members. I think the committee got on very well in all electorates in South Australia associated with the river, certainly with the member for Finniss. I know that when I worked with the member for Enfield on working out where people should go on a bus trip around the Lower Lakes, we had very open discussion about what we should do.

However, I disagree to a major extent with the committee's findings. Yes, buying Cubbie Station on its own is not a silver bullet and yes, the Darling River on its own is not a silver bullet. However, in the overall management of the Murray-Darling Basin we must remember that there are two parts: there is the Murray and there is the Darling. At the moment (and I have said it in this place many times) we do only manage the Murray. Yes, the Darling side is a lot more variable: it is about 700 per cent variability compared to 250 per cent variability for the southern Murray system.

The problem is that the southern Murray system has been in drought for years. The mouth of the Murray closed over in 1981 and, essentially, the southern system has been in drought since at least 2002. That is a long time for a sustained drought. As a farmer, I know we will come out of this and have inflows, and we will come back.

The $10 billion plan that John Howard instigated (before it was diluted by the present Rudd government) would have been a major step forward. The proposal to take all the power away from the states and give it to the federal government would have been a great step forward. That plan has been diluted and we are taking microscopic steps moving forward. There has been buy-back where, essentially, a lot of low security water is bought. That does not exist at the moment—or minute parts do—but there will be some of that available in the future when we get flows.

We need the Eastern States to put up their infrastructure projects so that we can get open channels into pipes. I have mentioned in this place before that I, along with the member for MacKillop, the federal member for Barker and our candidate for Chaffey (Tim Whetstone) visited New South Wales where the Murray and the Murrumbidgee originate in the Snowy Mountains. It was a very enlightening tour.

In one of the irrigation districts it was indicated, 'If we go into pipes we'll have to pay for pumping.' Hang on—bad luck! South Australia has bitten the bullet over the past 15 years or longer, put the pipes in and paid to manage its system. It is all in pipes with barely a channel to be seen in South Australia. However, there are thousands of kilometres of channels in New South Wales and Victoria. For example, in one area, to deliver three gigalitres of stock and domestic water you have to send seven gigalitres. That is a 130 per cent loss: you have to send seven gigalitres to get three gigalitres of useable water.

We really need to get infrastructure upgrades into the system and rolled out. However, the irrigation communities are not in a rush, so the federal government needs to get people to take action. I agree with the member for Enfield that the federal government should take the stick approach. In fact, it should go further: it should step in and use emergency legislation to take over the system and get on with the job. We will work with that because the states have been bluing over water since the late 1880s, when irrigation started to have a major effect on flows down the river, and that is why the locks and the barrages went in. In 1885 New South Wales and Victoria decided, 'We'll just split the water between us and South Australia can go he.' That is exactly what happened.

I will go back to talking about the benefits (or disbenefits, depending on how you look at it) of buying a place like Cubbie Station. It is interesting to note in media reports this week that it could not get enough money from international bidders on the open market to cover its $320 million debt to the National Australia Bank. We have heard at various times about how communities will disappear up there because it is obviously not sustainable for cotton to be grown there. Cubbie is not the only place up there. When I was there on a business trip last year there were at least 22 properties. I flew over properties where there were hectares of water. Most were growing wheat, trying to crop their way out of a debt situation. Meanwhile, people in this state relying on the Murray have lost their irrigation areas.

Recently, the New South Wales and federal governments got together and said, 'Well, perhaps we can ferry environmental water down south.' That is a step in the right direction, but to see it happen will be another thing. That is the only way that buying a place like Cubbie (and others) will benefit South Australia. Yes, it would raise pump take-off heights at Bourke and lower down and people will access that water. It would have to be ferried down but it would have to be part of a process of regulating the whole basin.

As far as losses go, if we had to get our critical human needs water for South Australia out of the southern basin alone—and all of it, 100 per cent of it, the 201 gigalitres—we would get only 11.5 per cent of the water delivered to us by the time we take into account transmission losses and that sort of thing. We do have losses in the southern basin. I acknowledge that taking action in the Darling will not be the total silver bullet but it will be a major part of the process. If we do not manage the basin as one (instead of managing it as we are doing, with two components), we will not get there.

It comes back to the irrigators in this state and the strife they are in. They are on only a 34 per cent allocation of so-called high security water, yet in the east there are some on 97 per cent on the Murray and 95 per cent high security water on the Murrumbidgee. Essentially, in trading water, all the cheques come out of South Australia. If people believe it is too hard to grow a crop in New South Wales they just take the money and get on with life.

There was talk in the report about the proposed Wellington weir. It is interesting to note the member for Enfield's comment about a government not letting people run out of water. Hang on: when the Premier announced the Wellington weir in November 2006 there was nothing about making sure that people below Wellington did not suffer from lack of a water supply. It has only been in the past two or three weeks that people at Point Sturt and Hindmarsh Island have been told that pipelines will be built. For three years these people have been waiting to see if they will have potable water. There has to be more equitable access to water.

I note that Kerry Muller, a scientist from around Strathalbyn, has talked about the reverse head if the weir was put in of up to 400 ml. To get water through the barrages you need at least plus 0.3 AHD and probably more likely plus 0.5 of a metre. So, it is a bit of a fallacy to think that you would protect Adelaide's water with a weir if you have dirty water blowing in over the back.

In regard to the government taking up action on the river in this state, I note the reluctance of ministers Weatherill and Garrett and Premier Rann to go down and meet with the public. Minister Weatherill had his own little trip down there, minister Garrett flew down without telling anyone, and Mike Rann will not go anywhere near the place because it is bad news. We need to stand up for our communities, and I have seen the problems elsewhere, but we need to fix the basin as a whole.

Time expired.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:38): Much of what I would have said has been covered most capably by the member for Hammond who, indeed, has done an enormous amount of work and is most aware of the situation relating to the Murray and the Murray-Darling. Suffice to say that, being down at the bottom end of the Murray and the Murray Mouth where my electorate boundaries are, the subject of water further up has been something of a hot topic for a considerable period of time.

I was also disturbed last week, whilst at the public works and environment and resources conference in Tasmania, when talking to a number of members of parliament from the Queensland parliament to find that they have a totally different view of the world from what we have in this state. It alarmed me that they seemed to think that they were right and we were wrong. That is a concerning thought.

Going back to what the member for Hammond said a few minutes ago, the tragedy of this is that the $10 billion water plan that was put up by John Howard, some years ago now, and sabotaged by Brumby in Victoria for purely political reasons, would have to go down in history as one of the saddest failures throughout the history of Australian democracy. It was just a nonsense that for political purposes this was sabotaged.

The member for Enfield talked about the situation in the Riverland, and the member for Hammond talked about it as well. I do not profess to be an expert on the situation by any means, but the irrigators up there are in a terrible way, largely through no fault of their own. The fact that we have irrigation pipes rather than open channels was also talked about, and, for the life of me, I cannot understand why we do not have irrigation pipes rather than channels in the rest of the country. In a system as precious as the Murray-Darling, quite frankly, it is just environmental, economic and social neglect that that has not been put in place.

I have just a few other comments on my end of the river. There is some artificial semblance of normality taking place again in the Goolwa Channel because of the dam at Clayton. I am delighted that we have river levels increasing in the miniscule part of the Murray-Darling system that is the Goolwa Channel, and the people around the channel are happy that things have improved considerably, that there is water back in the river, that activities are taking place and, to a great extent, that this has been fixed up. The tragedy is that it has taken far too long for that to occur.

The people down there were saying 12 or 18 months ago, 'Here's what you need to do; this is a part answer to an enormous problem,' but it took forever for the Rann government to take action on it. It took forever for the Minister for the River Murray to do anything about it. You just have to make hard decisions and get on with it. As indicated, the complete failure by the Premier to go anywhere near the river, the complete failure by the Prime Minister, even a week or two ago when he went to Murray Bridge, to go anywhere near the River Murray, the complete failure by minister Garrett (who would have to be the biggest failure for the environment in Australia's history; he should never have given up his day job in my view, because he is totally useless as a federal environment minister), and the failure by others to do anything about it is an outrageous disgrace.

We have held public meetings in my electorate. There have been public meetings at Goolwa. To the credit of the Minister for the River Murray, at my request and the request of others, she has come and fronted the community. I will give her credit where credit is due, but she is a very small cog in a very big wheel. The fact is that, by and large, there has been a failure to address the issues.

On the other side of the Clayton dam there is a community that is still tearing itself apart over the tragedy that is unfolding day by day in front of its eyes. As we come out of winter and spring—the rains have finished, unless we have a flood of biblical proportions during the summer, which with the current weather forecast of an El Nino is unlikely to happen, I might suggest—they face another dry, barren summer looking out over a depleting lake and seeing their livelihoods and their environment suffer as a consequence of man's action and the inaction by Rudd and Rann to do anything about it.

We are still waiting for some action. It is totally pathetic that the government of South Australia, the federal government of Australia, the government of Victoria, the government of Queensland and the government of New South Wales continue to talk and talk, to put out paper after paper, to do spin press releases, and nothing has happened. It is absolutely pathetic. It is inexcusable and it is an outrageous disgrace.

Meanwhile, the river system deteriorates, the lives of the people who live along it deteriorate, the economy of the nation deteriorates and, notwithstanding the fact that, as the member for Hammond said, we have been in drought for a number of years now, that is an inescapable fact of life, but we should have had some action, instead of committees to plan committees to plan committees. It is ridiculous.

The report, as put forward by the Natural Resources Committee, had some recommendations, and I do not intend to go back over those recommendations. I say to the people in my constituency, leading up from the Murray Mouth, through the Goolwa Channel, Hindmarsh Island and up along Currency Creek and towards the Finniss River, that I do not know where it is going to end. I fear that the incumbent Labor government in South Australia and this disgrace of an incumbent federal Labor government will not do anything about it. You will not see the Premier anywhere near the river or the lakes. He will not go down there.

The debate is still on about the Wellington weir. Let me tell you, sir, that I am still getting it loud and clear from the majority of people that I talk to that they do not want to see a water solution for the lake—they do not want a solution of seawater coming in. We will have to wait a bit longer to find out whether or not the weir will be built. I am also aware that some on the other side of the proposed Wellington weir want to see a water solution. It depends where you live. Politics is extremely local and it depends where you live.

We must have some action and we must have some answers. The committee has sought to investigate this matter quite industriously for some time; I commend it for that. They visited up and down the length of the river, and I know that other members have gone with them. The member for Hammond has taken a drive or two up there and had a good look at it. The member for Mount Gambier tried to have a crack at him about that trip, which I thought was pathetic; it was totally unsuitable. The member for Hammond has done the work. This side of the house lives with reality. We live with practical answers—not the claptrap, spin and nonsense that comes out of the mouth of premier Rann and prime minister Rudd. I anxiously await a solution, quite apart from the breaking of the drought and the huge rains needed to flood that area, but I commend the report to the house.

Motion carried.

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