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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-09-11 Daily Xml
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Address in Reply

ADDRESS IN REPLY

Ms SIMMONS (Morialta) (10:32): I move:

That the following Address in Reply to His Excellency the Governor's opening speech be adopted.

May it please Your Excellency—

1. Through Your Excellency, we the members of the House of Assembly, thank Your Excellency the Governor for the speech with which you have been pleased to open parliament.

2. We assure Your Excellency that we will give our best attention to all matters placed before us.

3. We earnestly pray for the Divine blessing on the proceedings of this session.

It is with great pleasure that I move the adoption of the Address in Reply. I commence by thanking His Excellency the Governor for attending parliament yesterday and his excellent speech to both houses of parliament. I also thank Kaurna elder, Lewis O'Brien, for his 'welcome to country' and his reminder that this parliament meets on the land of the Kaurna people. Uncle Lewis is always an inspiration to all who are privileged to know him. On behalf of the government, I offer him our sincere condolences on the recent death of his son, Stephen.

His Excellency quite rightly reflected on the achievements of this last session of parliament before looking to the exciting plans that this government has for this upcoming session. I would like to reflect and project on just some of those policies in the same manner.

In 2006, this government embarked on a bold, four-year program of reform using the South Australian Strategic Plan as its vision. Our aim was to foster confidence, jobs and opportunity, especially among our young people. While we continue to strive for economic growth we (the Labor Party) have committed to drawing a social dividend from that wealth. Underpinning this plan has been the government's ability to maintain fiscal discipline, retaining the state's AAA credit rating, which we regained in 2004 and have held ever since.

For the seventh consecutive year this government, through our Treasurer, Kevin Foley, returned a surplus budget which highlights the strong economic growth currently enjoyed in this state. I believe that these are exciting times for South Australia. We are well on the road to delivering greater opportunities and sustained prosperity for generations of South Australians and, importantly for this government, we will ensure that disadvantaged and marginalised people in our community can share the benefits of this economic dividend. Recent employment data shows that the South Australian job scene remains the best that we have seen in 30 years. Following 16 months of employment growth, 778,400 people were in work in July 2008, with 541,500 of these in full-time positions.

Unemployment is at a near record low and the labour force participation rate stands at 63 per cent, the highest in 17 years and just 0.1 per cent below the highest ever recorded. Since March 2002, when the first Rann government was elected, more than 90,000 new jobs have been created.

However, this government knows that it needs to build on this economic growth. Currently, South Australia has almost $45 billion worth of major projects either underway or in the pipeline, but we will need an extra 133,000 new workers between now and 2018 to fill positions in new projects and, as a state, we will also need another 206,000 workers to replace those who will leave the workforce.

Many of these new jobs will be in our mineral resources and defence sectors and depend on our meeting the challenges of new skills, strong training and workforce development systems. This government introduced the new Training and Skills Development Act in 2008 which enshrined the new Training and Skills Commission. This will underpin our response to these new industry needs and propel this state forward even further into the future.

However, the government knows that education does not start at the top end, and we remain committed to ensuring that all South Australian children have access to high quality early childhood care, preschool child care, education and health for children from birth to school. In 2007, we announced that 20 new children's centres would be established across the state including one in my own electorate of Morialta, at Il Nido Childcare Centre in Campbelltown.

Coming from the education and disability sectors before entering parliament, I know that the early detection of health or learning concerns is vital to ensure intervention programs are put in place to assist in a child's development. Not only will these children's centres provide positive environments for our children to learn and safely develop their social skills, but also they will become friendly places for families to learn more about their child's wellbeing and gain advice and information on parenting to support them in this vital role.

The Early Years Literacy Program has been another important initiative aimed at our reception to year 3s. The Rann government has put a huge emphasis on the number of children reading at an age-appropriate level. The Premier initiated his own Premier's Reading Challenge for our primary school children which has been so successful that we have had to extend the program to secondary schools and increase the levels of participation to create champions, legends and a hall of fame. That is an amazing expansion, which has been at the request of the children themselves.

Next year, this government will introduce a new South Australian certificate of education (SACE) and laws will come into force on 18 January 2009 to ensure that all young people are in school or training until they are 17 or they achieve their SACE or an equivalent qualification. This government is strongly committed to education and to lifting the skills of young people so that they can obtain a good, secure and satisfying job, so that they are skilled to compete in the global economy and so that we can build a stronger community.

We have invested $29.5 million in 10 new trade schools of the future and $84 million in school-to-work strategies aimed at assisting those children who previously fell through the gaps and were no longer engaged in their learning. In 2007, the Rann government achieved the best school retention rates in 12 years, at 74.5 per cent.

However, if our children are not healthy, they will not achieve their true potential. According to disturbing South Australian data, 20 per cent of four year olds are overweight or obese. I am a member of the parliament's Social Development Committee that led an inquiry into this subject in 2007. From this inquiry, the Right Bite program became mandatory in school canteens at the beginning of 2008, banning the sale of junk food in school canteens. We believe that by putting a major focus on healthy eating and physical activity in schools, we are fulfilling an important role in enabling students to develop their capacity for healthy growth and development into adulthood and healthier futures.

Obesity plus other new century illnesses in adults continue to put huge pressure on the South Australian health system. Currently, one in six people in this state are over the age of 65. As I have said in a previous speech in this place:

Older people have very different health care needs from the rest of the population. The numbers suffering from chronic diseases is growing dramatically, and will grow exponentially as the baby boomers reach 70.

That is why this government, on the advice of John Menadue's acclaimed Generational Health Review, is taking urgent steps to refocus the culture of health care in this state.

Our reform places an emphasis on preventative measures, lifestyle change and in engaging the community in making healthy choices for themselves. We know that we need to take the pressure off our hospital emergency departments and use acute hospital beds for those who really need them. The introduction of GP Plus health centres across the state will provide the community with a holistic and integrated approach to care. These centres, together with the expansion of rehabilitation services in the home, will better support the health needs of families and particularly older people with chronic rather than acute care needs.

This government also recognised that the governance of our health care system was in need of major reform and passed the health care bill in 2007 to ensure a greater capacity for the health system in this state and to act as a coordinated, strategic and integrated system to help meet the challenges of health pressures into the future.

Under the South Australian health care plan, the new Marjorie Jackson-Nelson Hospital remains the centrepiece of this government's decade-long reform of the health care system because, as well as changing the way we manage chronic illness and primary health care, we also need to transform how we deliver acute care.

The 'Marj' will become the major acute hospital in the state, taking the most complex cases from across our system. Frankly, I am personally fed up with the continuing debate about the redevelopment of the Royal Adelaide Hospital as an alternative way forward. Redeveloping the RAH would mean retrofitting an existing shell which is on a small site.

Let us be quite clear about what these nay-sayers are proposing, because it would mean that health care delivery would be seriously disrupted and staff and patients inconvenienced for more than a decade. Patients would have to receive care in temporary facilities during the redevelopment. To rebuild the RAH would take until 2021, while the 'Marj' will be finished—be bigger, have more beds, more room and be more accessible by public transport—in 2016. I say: let the debate end now.

To complement this new hospital, this government has also committed $153.68 million to the redevelopment of the Flinders Medical Centre as the major tertiary hospital for the south. We will continue the redevelopment of the QEH at a cost of $27 million, as well as the Women's and Children's Hospital and the Noarlunga Hospital. We will spend a further $201 million to complete the redevelopment of the Lyell McEwin Hospital as the major referral centre for the north; this is on top of the $92.4 million already spent on the Lyell McEwin redevelopment up to June 2005.

The Rann government is also reforming the mental health system. Following the release of the 'Stepping Up' report by Monsignor David Cappo and the Social Inclusion Board, we have committed $94.1 million to build an integrated community-based system of care, comprising community care and support, 24-hour supported accommodation, community recovery centres and intermediate, acute and secure care beds. We will commence construction next year on the redevelopment of the Glenside campus, providing a 129-bed hospital, 40 supported accommodation places and 15 intermediate care beds, which will complement the other new services being developed throughout the state.

This Rann government is committed to making things happen to improve all aspects of the quality of our lives. So, given the escalating world price of oil and petrol, we recognise that public transport will play an even more important and significant role into the future for South Australians.

In this year's budget we announced an exciting $2 billion investment in public transport, including an extended coast-to-coast tram service and the electrification of our train network. This is the biggest single investment ever in the public transport system in this state's history. It will also include, as the Governor pointed out, 80 additional buses and a new ticketing system. The 10-year program will deliver 50 new electric trains and, for the first time in Australia, 15 new hybrid tram/trains and additional light rail vehicles.

If we are to continue to expand our industry, our road transport infrastructure must also expand. Currently, 18 major road infrastructure projects are on the go throughout the state; some, such as the Bakewell Bridge underpass, were completed ahead of time. Work on the Northern Expressway started in July, and it is expected to be completed and open to traffic by December 2010.

In accordance with the State Strategic Plan, the Minister for Road Safety is working hard to reduce the death toll on our roads to 90 deaths per year by 2010. In this third session of the 51st parliament, major legislative initiatives will occur to amend the Road Traffic Act and the Motor Vehicles Act 1959 to introduce a mandatory alcohol interlock scheme for drink driving offenders. It will also become mandatory for all drivers to carry their driver's licence with them when behind the wheel.

This government introduced roadside drug driver testing in July 2006 because medical tests show that, between 2002 and 2006, 23 per cent of drivers who died on South Australian roads had detectable levels of cannabis, speed or ecstasy in their blood at the time of their crash. Up to March this year, 9,562 drivers have been tested; 205 have had a positive reading, with 176 readings confirmed by further forensic evidence. That is a strike rate of one in 50 drivers tested. In this sitting of parliament we will implement a number of changes to strengthen this drug driving legislation.

Before the last election the Rann government made a commitment to building safer communities right across South Australia and to ensuring that we increase the number of police on the beat by 700 above the natural attrition rate and that they also have the resources they need to carry out their important work. Another part of this commitment was the creation of four new police shopfronts, one of which is at Newton in my electorate. Being highly visible, they act as a deterrent to crime and allow a rapid response rate to crime reports in the area.

We have taken the To Break the Cycle report from the Social Inclusion Board very seriously and introduced the new Statutes Amendment (Young Offenders) Act 2007 as a result. The report identified that there is a hard core of young, serious repeat offenders responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in this state. These young people fail to respond to the cautionary and diversionary measures which characterise the youth justice system and which work, it must be said, for most young offenders.

We consider that these young repeat offenders who continue offending heedless of warnings and consequences and who present a serious risk to public safety should face the far harsher penalties that can be handed down by an adult court. However, SAPOL has told us that much of the organised crime in South Australia can be attributed to the criminal activities of motorcycle gangs such as the Hell's Angels, Finks, Rebels and Gypsy Jokers.

The first Rann government led the way in Australia in clamping down on these gangs by passing the anti-fortification legislation and tightening up the licensing of the security and crowd controller industry, which was run by the gangs. Although South Australia Police has had some success in tackling the activities of the gangs, SAPOL came to government subsequently and asked for new powers to tackle the activities and influence of the gangs head-on.

These crimes range from the organised theft and re-identification of motor vehicles and motorcycles through to drug manufacture, importation and distribution; murder; vice; fraud; blackmail; assaults; public disorder; intimidation; firearms offences; and money laundering.

Let us not be mistaken here. These are crimes that have the potential to affect all of us, our families and our children. This government has tackled these criminal operations, giving the police more powers by passing the Serious and Organised Crime (Control) Bill, the Statutes Amendment (Public Order Offences) Bill, the Firearms (Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill, and made amendments to the Liquor Licensing Act. This government has also taken a very serious view on the issue of rape and sexual offences, introducing law reforms that give better protection for victims and witnesses giving evidence in court, but also giving clearer direction to the courts about what can be admitted as evidence.

Perhaps, for me personally, the most significant reports handed down this year have been the reports of the Children in State Care Commission of Inquiry and the Inquiry into Child Abuse on the APY Lands, both conducted by Commissioner Ted Mullighan. As I said in my speech on 19 June this year, the Mullighan inquiry report is one of the most shocking documents I have read in my life, despite having worked in the welfare sector for over 30 years.

The apology given by this government for past abuse was given in the spirit of reconciliation. It was the right thing to do because the survivors, as children, suffered in our care. It was the start of the healing process. We, as a responsible government, needed to acknowledge their bravery in coming forward, and now we need to implement the recommendations from the Mullighan Report so that we change practices in our system to ensure that we always provide the best care to children who need it. Currently, we have 1,750 children in care in South Australia. This figure is atrocious.

This government has committed $28.2 million for early intervention support for families where the children are at risk of abuse or neglect and another $13.2 million for families with severe problems to help them stay together or be reunified. But I personally believe that it takes a whole community to bring up a child. Parenting was never an easy job; it will never be an easy job. We all have a responsibility to help and support the families we know to do the best they can to raise their children. We need to provide practical support and practical help, not judgment.

Discussions relating to securing Adelaide's water supply have dominated the last sitting of parliament and will, as the Governor highlighted, continue to be a major topic in this session. The Premier has successfully lobbied the commonwealth government to establish a new federal authority with unprecedented powers to manage the Murray-Darling Basin in the national interest. The new authority will set a cap to limit the amount of water that can be taken from the basin. The Rann government secured more than $610 million in federal funding from the COAG meeting in July to restore the health of the River Murray and secure future water supplies for towns and irrigators.

In this year's budget we invested $96 million towards the $1.4 billion desalination plant and pipeline. The plant will ensure access to high-quality drinking water even when rainfall is low, and it will reduce our reliance on the River Murray. The plant will produce 5 billion litres of water a year, which is about a quarter of Adelaide's needs. We are also building a new north-south pipeline to connect reservoirs north and south of the city and improve water access, as well as doubling the storage capacity of water in the Mount Lofty Ranges.

We realise that the community is still learning about saving water and recycling, so we have introduced a raft of rebates to encourage people to save water around their homes. South Australia currently leads the nation in water recycling at 29 per cent, but as the driest city in the driest state we know that we need to increase the level of waste water recycled to 45 per cent.

I am very pleased that this state will lead the nation in the banning of one-use-only paper bags from 1 January 2009. It is really important that the number of fills and dumps currently crowded with these bags, which take between 15 and 1,000 years to decompose, is reduced considerably.

We are a resource-rich state and, as His Excellency so articulately pointed out, we are now enjoying international recognition of our state's outstanding mineral prospectivity. The government's Plan for Accelerating Exploration (PACE) is playing a key role in attracting and securing major national and international mineral exploration investment in South Australia.

The value of minerals exploration has skyrocketed, increasing tenfold in the last five years and reaching $344.1 million in March 2008. South Australia now has 10 operating mines and is a leader in uranium, copper-gold and mineral sands exploration activity. We are host to the development of BHP Billiton's multibillion-dollar Olympic Dam operation, and we have an expectation that more major discoveries and mining developments are to come. In fact, the Fraser Institute in Canada ranks South Australia as the fourth most prospective place in the world out of 65 jurisdictions—up from 30th place a few years ago.

Through my involvement with the South Australian Business Ambassadors Network, I see a state that has an energy about it, an optimism and a growing belief that we can achieve great success in the world. Business investment is 129 per cent higher this decade, our annual exports are 66 per cent higher, and retail sales are 42 per cent higher. In addition, private new capital investment increased $5 billion in the year to March 2008, which is the highest level since records began in September 1989.

Through the hard work of the South Australian Economic Development Board, created in 2002, South Australia is now on the crest of an export wave, with almost half our exports going to the Asia Pacific, which is the world's fastest growing region. South Australia is a strategically positioned export base and destined to enjoy new-found export wealth.

I took a punt 22 years ago and decided that, after travelling the world for over 30 years, South Australia was where I wanted to raise my children, Katie and Matthew. I still believe that I was right. I still believe that, by remaining committed to sustainable business, ever mindful of managing environmental challenges and forever vigilant to ensure that all South Australians enjoy the fruits of our state's success, we will provide a safe, prosperous and secure state for future generations of South Australians. I am very proud to be part of a government that is committed to achieving these ends.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (10:58): It is my pleasure, on behalf of the opposition, to second the motion moved by the member for Morialta and indicate to the house that I am the lead speaker on behalf of the opposition. In seconding the motion, I congratulate our Governor on the work he does for South Australia and thank him for coming across the road to open this session of the 51st parliament.

It was my intention today to talk about water and the dire consequences this state faces into the future, irrespective of what the Governor said in the opening remarks of his address. As it so happens, he spent a fair bit of time yesterday speaking about water, so I am delighted that I will indeed be responding to the Governor's address in quite a significant way.

I start by giving a little background on where we are at and how we got there. The Premier, who obviously wrote the Governor's speech, made certain claims yesterday and then came into the house and made a ministerial statement. The reality is that, after 6½ years of this government—

An honourable member: Long years.

Mr WILLIAMS: Six and a half long years of this government—the people of South Australia and certainly those who work in the media have at last seen the reality of what this Premier is all about: long on rhetoric, short on action. The Premier had the Governor make certain statements. When we spoke to people in the media, they brushed them aside and said, 'Oh, we've heard all that before. Nothing there.' The Premier came into the house yesterday and made certain statements, and I will come back to them later in my address. We went to the people in the media and said, 'Notwithstanding what the Premier has said, this is the reality,' and their reaction was, 'No; we fully understand.'

The Premier's credibility is at an all-time low—and nowhere is it lower than on matters pertaining to water and the issues of water security in South Australia, and that point will be reinforced continually as I go through my remarks. Time after time after time we see that the Premier's wont is to make grandiose statements but, in reality, his achievements and the achievements of his government are abysmally small.

I will start off by acknowledging that this problem has been around for quite a while. In fact, the drought that is now besetting our nation has been with us at least since 2002, and I have made that remark a number of times in this place. I will quote to the house something that the Premier said on 28 August 2002. He said:

Mr Speaker, in the past six months rainfall in South Australia has been 60 to 80 per cent below the 30-year average across a large area of the state.

So, in August 2002, not long after he became Premier, the Premier acknowledged to the house that we were in a drought in South Australia. On 21 January 2003, Premier Rann issued a press release saying that the river was in dire straits. He said:

Normally South Australia's part of the River Murray receives flows of around 5,000 gigalitres but, following three years of unusually dry conditions, we have only been receiving 1,850 gigalitres of entitlement flow since December 2001.

So, already the flows in the River Murray were down to minimum entitlement flows as of December 2001, and the Premier acknowledged that. Do I need to remind the house that that is seven long years ago?

I have heard the Premier and his various water ministers—because he has had more than one—say, 'We can't make it rain,' or, 'Oh, we didn't know we were going to have a drought,' or 'Woops! This came up behind us and caught us out.' The reality is that for at least seven long years the Premier has known. In fact, I have previously quoted parts of a speech he made to the National Press Club in February 2003, I think it was if my memory serves me well, where the Premier talked about reducing our reliance on the River Murray, harvesting stormwater and recycling water. That was February 2003, and none of that has occurred. All the Premier has done in those 5½ years since February 2003 is talk and talk and talk. We understand that he has some plans. This is the problem we have with the Premier and the government.

It would be remiss of me to suggest to the house that the government acts this way only with regard to water. The reality is that the government acts this way right across all the portfolio areas: very long on rhetoric, very short on action. But I will restrict my comments to water.

During the week prior to the winter break, on 23 July, we were talking about water. Prior to that, the Premier had just come back from a COAG meeting on 3 July where he signed off on a new Intergovernmental Agreement. The opposition rightfully raised some concerns about the Intergovernmental Agreement, and we still have those concerns. The Leader of the Opposition challenged the Premier to a debate. He challenged him to a debate anywhere—on radio or in front of a TV camera, and the Premier's reaction was, 'I will debate it in the house.' However, come 23 July when the opposition leader moved to suspend standing orders to allow for such debate, the government refused to be party to that.

On that day, the opposition used its grievance time to debate some of the concerns it had about the Intergovernmental Agreement. Of course, the government realised how embarrassing it was going to be so it moved to have a half hour debate at the end of the day's session, remembering that there was no government business on the Notice Paper after the grievance debate.

I made the statement that the Premier was gutless. I said that the Premier was refusing to debate the matter, and I was called a liar. The member for Mawson stood up and said, 'That's a lie. You're going to get your debate later on.' Well, I am here today to tell the house that the Premier never debated the matter. We did have that half an hour later in the day, but the Premier never got to his feet and he never tried to debate the concerns raised by the opposition.

Never has the Premier been willing to stand up toe to toe with the opposition and debate these issues. He will come in here and abuse question time by having Dorothy Dixers asked from the backbench or railing against opposition questions, irrespective of what we ask. He will say what he likes to say, knowing that the opposition cannot answer during question time. The Premier will not stand up and have a toe-to-toe debate on this, but I am not surprised—and I will reveal why as I proceed with my contribution.

The member for Mawson was proved wrong on 28 July and my statement was vindicated. Before we start to find a solution, I think we need to determine the problem. If the problem is not determined, it is most difficult to find a solution. This is part of the reason why the current government is struggling to find solutions to our water security problems. The government continually says that this is the worst drought in recorded history. I would contend that that is a questionable statement. It is a severe drought—I am not walking away from that—but to say that it is the worst drought in our recorded history is somewhat questionable. I would like the minister to go onto the Bureau of Meteorology site and look at some of the historical data. I invite him to do that, because the drought—

The Hon. J.W. Weatherill: You're the expert.

Mr WILLIAMS: I am not saying I am an expert. What I am saying is that, when you are in denial and you blame the wrong causes, you create difficulties for yourself in finding a solution. I do not deny that it is a severe drought, but I question whether it is the worst drought in recorded history. I am questioning whether this is—as the Premier has said—the one in a thousand year drought when we have only a bit over a hundred years of records. The Bureau of Meteorology statistics suggest that in the late 1930s, early 1940s, we had a drought of grave significance across the Murray-Darling Basin. I just put that forward for members to contemplate. I suggest that, if any member seriously questions what I am putting, they go to the Bureau of Meteorology site and trawl through some of the data there. It is not that difficult, to be quite honest.

The government also says that we have accelerating climate change. Again, the Bureau of Meteorology site will show that we have some increase in temperatures across the basin but there is no evidence that climate change has caused a change in the rainfall trends across Australia. I am not suggesting that climate change is not a factor but, when the government suggests that climate change is a very important factor and, therefore, extrapolates that there is not much that it can do about it until we get carbon emissions under control (and it might be a 50, 100 or 200-year project), I would contend that, again, it misses the point and walks away from the solutions that it should be working on. That is the problem when using that sort of language and that sort of process.

Is the drought that we are suffering caused by anthropogenic factors? It is questionable. Again, that suggests to me that the government is somewhat in denial about its ability to do something, and to do something positive. The evidence that I have been able to collect, when looking to see what has caused the significant problem that we are facing here in South Australia, relates to the diversions from the river systems.

I have downloaded a graph from the Murray-Darling Commission's website which shows that the average natural flow out to sea (according to this graph) is something like 14,000 gigalitres. So, about 14,000 gigalitres was the estimated average natural flow before any intervention following white settlement of this country. The total diversions out of the system today—we will call them allocations: obviously, this amount of water is not being diverted today because it is just not there—amount to something like 13,000 gigalitres; so, under normal flow conditions, about 1,000 gigalitres would run into the sea.

That may be a reasonable figure, in some circumstances, where you have a very reliable climate. It might be enough to keep the mouth of a significant river open. It might be enough to support the ecosystems along a significant river in a part of the world where rainfall was very regular and very reliable. However, that is not what we have in Australia. We have an irregular, unreliable rainfall and a huge discrepancy between high-flow years and low-flow years.

The problem is that we have over-allocated the river. When I say 'we', I think South Australia has largely been an innocent party in this. The problem the opposition argues is that the state government has given away opportunities to have this matter addressed quickly and dramatically, for the benefit of South Australia. That is the problem we have here. The Premier does acknowledge that over-allocation is a big problem. Again, he has had plenty of time but has done very little.

I remind the house that in the mid-1990s the basin states noted that there was an impact on wetlands; that red gum forests were going into decline; that there was an impact on the native fish population; and, all of a sudden, we saw blue-green algal blooms occurring. I think it was in 1990 in the Darling River and through the '90s in parts of the River Murray. In June 1995 the basin states agreed to a cap, but what they did was agree to a cap on surface flows—on surface water diversions. It was agreed to put that at 1993-94 levels. Referring again to the graph that I downloaded from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission website, it is obvious that the increase in diversions has not abated since that time. We have continued to see a rise in diversions from the 1993-94 levels, of the order of some 2,000 gigalitres. So, in that period since 1994 to today we have seen the total diversions increase from about 11,000 gigalitres to about 13,000 gigalitres (it is a little under that, but it is of that order). So, we have to ask ourselves: what has caused this?

I do not believe that the figures in the graph I am using reflect what has happened in the Darling River (particularly in the upper reaches) and its tributaries in the last water year (earlier this calendar year), when we saw huge diversions. We read just recently that, in Queensland alone, the diversions reached record levels. I do not believe that is reflected in the graph that I am quoting from.

The government has failed, in a lot of cases, to recognise the impact of surface water and groundwater interaction. It has certainly done so with respect to its agreement that the federal government give $1 billion of taxpayers' money to the Victorian government for its Food Bowl project (and I might come back to that). Every water expert that I have heard talk on that subject says that the net benefit to the river will probably turn out to be a disbenefit because of the connection between surface water and groundwater flows. If you reduce leakage out of earthen drains that run back into the river you will not get a net saving of water. If you reallocate that water, which you think you have saved, you are giving a disbenefit to the stream flows. The fact that South Australia signed off $1 billion of taxpayers' money to see that happen, I think, just shows up how far off the mark we are.

The Murray-Darling Basin Commission has produced a very good report on the connection between surface water and groundwater systems. It talks about disconnected and connected streams (that is, connected and disconnected to the groundwater system), bank storage and gaining and losing streams. A losing stream is one where the groundwater system is lower than the surface water system: obviously, gravity dictates that the water will flow from the surface water system into the groundwater system. It talks about gaining streams where the opposite occurs; where the groundwater system in the banks of the stream is, in fact, above the surface of the water in the creek, stream or river, and water will infiltrate into that surface water stream from the groundwater system.

However, the problem we have had is that, when that cap that I talked about a few minutes ago was put on in the mid 1990s, at 1993-94 stream flow diversions (or surface water diversions), there was no cap on groundwater diversions. So, allocations kept being issued for people to place bores almost on the river bank, in some cases, and further away from the river, in other cases, and allow that water to be extracted, or pumped out from groundwater.

Whether it is a directly connected system or a system where there is a gaining or a losing impact on the stream, by lowering the groundwater through pumping we exacerbate, or accelerate, those impacts. If it is a gaining stream, and groundwater is flowing from the groundwater system into the stream and you pump the water out and use it for irrigation, less water will go into the stream. So, you have a negative impact. If it is a losing stream, where water is naturally flowing out of the stream into the groundwater system, if you lower the groundwater system again through pumping, more water will flow out of the stream and it will flow at a greater rate. It is not rocket science: it is quite simple physics. Most people can understand it.

The interesting thing about this is that in the report that was prepared by the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (I think Sinclair Knight Merz was involved in the preparation of the document) they estimated that way back in the year 2000 those groundwater diversions were having a deleterious effect on stream flow to the rate of about 186 gigalitres per year, by 2000.

I do not know what the figure is today. I have not been able to find any updated figures. They did estimate in the same document that without more groundwater diversions by 2050 that would be 700 gigalitres a year. I ask members to contemplate that. As a nation we are talking about purchasing back about 1,500 gigalitres of licence from irrigators in order to provide environmental flows. Even if we put in no more groundwater extraction bores from 2000, by 2050 we will need at least another 700 gigalitres—almost half of that we are talking about buying back now. Why has there been inaction for the last seven years? Why has nothing been done?

I attended a function recently where a CSIRO scientist gave some figures and a talk on this subject. In his presentation he had a graph which showed the amount of increasing groundwater extractions. Unfortunately, the figures that he had to hand were from 1983-84 to 1996-97, but they indicate what has been happening. In New South Wales there was a 217 per cent increase in the amount of groundwater extraction. In Victoria there was a 202 per cent increase. In Queensland there was a decrease of 26 per cent over that period. Western Australia is not relevant to our discussion. In South Australia there was a 22 per cent decrease. That is the sort of thing that has been happening since the surface water cap was put on.

But inaction is the problem. The report to which I refer is a 2003 report. The first recommendation indicates that the state should reduce groundwater allocations and consequently groundwater use to sustainable levels. The recommendation goes on about matters which do not add or detract from the argument. Bearing in mind there are probably 30 or 40 recommendations altogether, the second recommendation states that in the short term—and I am not sure what 'short term' means; this government seems to think it means 11 years—groundwater should be accounted for within the spirit of the cap. That is the cap of 1993-94 to which I have referred already. In the long term, groundwater should be included in an expanded cap—so a new cap should be set, including groundwater. Hear, Hear! The government will say, 'That is exactly what we are doing.' The problem is that that recommendation was made in 2003. The government will achieve that, hopefully, by 2011. That is eight years. It is another eight years of damage and we are living it right now.

I contend that the evidence which I have produced so far on what is happening in the river suggests that mismanagement or lack of management is the major cause—which has been exacerbated by drought. I wish that the Premier and the government would recognise that. John Howard recognised it when he called on the states to get together. He said, 'The reality is that after 100 years you keep getting it wrong. We need a national plan.' John Howard deserves a big tick for that. He is the first prime minister of this country to suggest that we need a national plan. Unfortunately, politics intervened in the run-up to the election on 24 November 2007. He was never going to get that plan off the ground because Labor premiers around Australia—the Labor governments around Australia—obviously conspired to ensure that the plan never got off the ground.

We can blame the Victorians as much as we like, but I suggest that the other premiers were just as culpable. On 28 July the Minister for Water Security told the house that the Premier of South Australia went to Queensland to talk to the Queensland government and went to New South Wales to talk to the New South Wales government and got agreement in both those states. She failed to tell us that he went to Victoria. Why did she fail to tell us that? Because the Premier never went to Victoria, and that is part of the problem.

The Governor's address yesterday was a regurgitation of old news. With regard to water, I did not pick one new policy. I did not pick that the government had thought, in any way, shape or form, that its strategies so far were either working or working fast enough. It just said, 'Business as usual', and went through and listed all the things that we have all been talking about. In some cases, the Premier has been talking about them since 2003, at least. If we examine his speech to the National Press Club, he mentioned all the things that were in the Governor's speech yesterday. We have been talking about them for five years and we are still talking about them. Urgency is required.

One of the pieces of old news that arose again was the $610 million for the Murray Futures program; that is, the money that has come from the $10 billion that John Howard put together to address the problems on the River Murray. I will not argue that some of the projects that have been identified and will be identified are not very worthwhile projects and will not be very welcomed by constituents such as mine and some of my colleagues in regional South Australia. The reality is that I am really concerned about what will happen around the Lower Lakes because we are putting in a pipe network. I am wondering whether, instead of finding a cure, we are giving the people in that area a crutch. Instead of curing the cripple, we are throwing a crutch to them and saying, 'Well, hobble on'. As a state we should be demanding that the Lower Lakes are saved from sea water inundation. We should be doing everything to save them from sea water inundation.

In his ministerial statement yesterday, the Premier said that a number of the options which the federal department put to the federal minister for getting water to the Lower Lakes are already unavailable. The reality is that, out of the eight options that I have been through, I do not think any one of them can solve the problem. Maybe we can take bits out of each of them or bits out of those which are practical, or maybe there is a ninth, tenth or eleventh option which puts together a combination of those options, but, however we do it, we should be leaving no stone unturned in an effort to save the Lower Lakes. Having spent money to build a pipeline network throughout the lakes, we should not then feel comfortable that we can abandon the Lower Lakes.

This government and Labor governments across this nation have always stated that they are much more attune to the environment than the Liberal Party. I would contend in this instance the fallacy of that is proven. The Liberal Party is fighting tooth and nail to save the Lower Lakes. The Labor government in South Australia is fighting tooth and nail to save its own backside—and there is a large difference. I cannot believe that the government of South Australia is willing to walk away from the Lower Lakes as this government appears that it might do.

Yesterday, the Governor also talked about desalination in South Australia. This is one of the projects that has been put forward by the government as being one of our saviours. Again I believe it is essential, but again it is one of those crutch type solutions to a problem. Having gone down the path of creating desalinated water for use in Adelaide, we should not then say that we can abandon the environment of the River Murray. They go hand in hand. We have to maintain them both. But I will briefly talk about desalination.

As we know, the Liberal Party proposed that we had come to the point in time when we needed desalination in South Australia. We proposed that in January 2007 following a visit in November 2006 by my colleague who was then leader of the party (Iain Evans) and the Hon. David Ridgway, in the other place, to the Kwinana desalination plant. Before that visit, I think we had already come to the conclusion that we had to do something and desalination was most likely the solution. We visited that plant, gathered information, and came up with a policy that was released in January 2007 stating that, in government, a Liberal Party would be committed to building a desalination plant in South Australia.

What was the government's reaction? It was exactly the same as the government's reaction to everything we say. It derided it and denigrated it. It said it would not work, would cost too much and we cannot afford it. (The reality is that we cannot afford anything in South Australia with the Treasurer and government that we have.) That is what they said, and they said that month after month. Then, eventually, they came to the realisation that we were right and we are in a significant drought, it might not rain tomorrow, next week or next month, and we had to do something. Eventually the government came to understand the importance.

But, how does the government react when it does come to the realisation that we have to do something? I will quote from The Advertiser of Wednesday 12 September last year, 12 months ago. The Advertiser stated:

Premier Mike Rann yesterday described as 'inevitable' the building of two desalination plants, one for Adelaide and another to service the Olympic Dam mine, Whyalla and the Eyre Peninsula.

On 18 October, in this house the Premier said:

I am delighted to announce to the house today that we will have two desal plants, one near Whyalla to service the giant Olympic Dam expansion, with a South Australian government and a federal government component which will be there to supply desalinated water to Whyalla, Port Pirie, Port Augusta and parts of Eyre Peninsula; it will probably be the biggest desal plant in the Southern Hemisphere. There will be a second desal plant for Adelaide.

That was in September/October last year—almost a year after we proposed that we needed to build a desalination plant. Then, as recently as May this year—on 20 May—the water minister on ABC 639 radio said:

...we're building two desalination plants—there's the desalination plant in Adelaide and, of course, we're working with BHP on the possibility of developing extra capacity for the Upper Spencer Gulf and the Upper Eyre Peninsula from that plant.

So desalination was not the answer, but now we are going to have two. The reality is that 12 months down the track it looks like we will be back to one desalination plant.

How much homework had the government done? Very little. The government would have us believe it had been working hand in glove with BHP Billiton but, apparently, they had not been doing very much work at all. It turns out that the quality of water that BHP Billiton was going to produce from its proposed plant in the Upper Spencer Gulf would not be suitable for SA Water and SA Water has advised the government that the cost of reprocessing that water would be too costly and it should not go ahead with it. The opposition's understanding is that is where we find ourselves now.

Then what happens? The Prime Minister blows into town and says, 'If you double the size of the plant at Port Stanvac I will give you another $100 million.' Where does he get the $100 million from? My understanding is that the federal government was going to put $160 million into the proposal in the Upper Spencer Gulf, so the federal government has walked away with $60 million in its pocket, and $160 million in its pocket if we do not double the size to 100 gigalitres.

One of the problems with the proposal to build a desal plant at Port Stanvac is that the community and, certainly, the opposition—all South Australians—have not been brought into the thinking behind the site selection. We have not been given the information that the government has received on the site selection, and this is important because a significant part of this project is a $300 million pipe connecting Happy Valley and Hope Valley—connecting the northern and southern parts of our water distribution.

The water that is pumped from the River Murray to the southern part of the network at Mount Bold is significantly less than the desal plant is proposed to produce—it is about 24 gigalitres a year, whereas the desal plant is proposed to produce at least double that. So, what do you do with the water if you are not consuming it down there? Well, you have then got to spend another $300 million to pipe it northwards. Also, that $300 million would be very handy if you did double the size of the Mount Bold reservoir to which, of course, the government was committed a little over 12 months ago but to which now, again, it is not committed.

The theme keeps recurring. The government keeps committing to things, saying that this is what it will do and, whoops, six months later, 12 months later, 18 months later, nothing is happening and the commitment has disappeared. I implore the government to release the advice it was given regarding the site selection for Port Stanvac. I implore the government to do that, because I do not know whether the government has got this right. There are so many things the government has got wrong that I really suspect it might have got that one wrong as well. Let me turn to wastewater and stormwater. Here are a couple of rippers.

We have the Minister for Water Security continually going around this state and going interstate—whenever she can get on the media—saying, 'We recycle more of our wastewater than any other capital city in Australia. We are doing a better job than anyone else in Australia. Aren't we good!' Not one extra drop of water has been recycled in South Australia since this government came to office in 2002. The water that has been recycled from Bolivar out to Virginia was all done in a project of the previous government. The water being recycled from Christies Beach, which is being piped down to Willunga, was done under a project of the previous government—done by private enterprise, in fact.

What has this government done? Well, it inherited some upgrades to the Glenelg Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is producing A-class water as opposed to when it used to be producing B-class water. That allowed the government then to sell A-class water to Adelaide Airport Limited for its use in its new terminal buildings, and that is happening and that is commendable. I commend the government. But what has happened in that process is that the government has set a price on that A-class water which is significantly above what, say, the people at Virginia are paying for their A-class water from Bolivar—probably 14¢ a kilolitre, I have been advised, as opposed to something like 41¢ a kilolitre.

You might ask, 'Well, so what if they are paying for it?' The 'so what' is that, before they started producing A-class water, a lot of the water from the Glenelg Wastewater Treatment Plant was being used by golf courses, and a number of them are along the dunes near the beaches. They were using B-class water from Glenelg. I am not sure of the figure but they were paying probably around that 13¢-14¢ a kilolitre. As soon as the water was provided to Adelaide Airport Limited there was only one rising main to pump the water through, and SA Water and the government have said to those golf courses, 'Sorry, you have to pay the 41¢ a kilolitre for that water.'

The reality is that the golf courses said, 'No, thanks. We can provide our own water more cheaply by putting a bore in the ground and pumping it.' Some of the golf courses, through federal government funding, have put in some stormwater recycling. They are actually capturing stormwater and getting it down into the aquifer for their later use in the summer time instead of using that treated wastewater from Glenelg.

It is arguable that there is now more water being disposed of from the Glenelg Wastewater Treatment Plant into the Gulf St Vincent than there was several years ago resulting from that, because the government does not have the smarts to work out a pricing scheme; it does not have the smarts to send the right pricing signals to encourage people to use recycled water. It is easier to dump it into the gulf. We have all seen the Adelaide Coastal Waters Study and we know the impact that that is having. I think only this week we saw an announcement from the government that it is going to build a pipeline to pump sand up and down the beaches. Why do we pump sand up and down the beaches? One of the reasons is that we are losing our seagrass beds. Why are we losing those? Because we are dumping effluent into the gulf.

It is cause and effect. It is not rocket science: it is just keeping an eye on the ball, and if we correctly priced the wastewater from Glenelg we would see a lot more of it being used. 'Ah,' says the government, 'but we've got another scheme. We're spending $30 million-odd to build a pipeline to bring it to the city of Adelaide. We're going to use it in the Parklands.' Commendable; great; I thoroughly support it; however, I argue that the pipeline should be of one metre internal diameter—not 700 millimetres as has been designed—so that the capacity of the pipeline is doubled and the number of people who will use that water is expanded. It is aimed principally at the city of Adelaide, but there are a lot of open spaces around the city of Adelaide (at schools and other institutions), that would love to use some of that water, if it was available and if it was properly priced.

By building a 700 millimetre pipeline we may not have the capacity to do that. I think we should be ensuring that we build it so that the capacity is such that we do not have to dispose of wastewater effluent from Glenelg into the gulf. That is a problem that the government does not seem to be very concerned about. It thinks that we can get rid of a little bit more, that we will pump it up to the city of Adelaide, and that what they cannot use there we will dump into the sea.

That brings me to the big one: stormwater. Only yesterday on FIVEaa the Minister for Water Security was saying how wonderful the government is, 'We've contributed $16 million to stormwater harvesting and recycling, aquifer storage and recovery.' When you look into it you will see that most of that money was in the form of a gift of land. This government has done diddly-squat with regard to stormwater harvesting and recycling.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: My colleague says that it has done less than that, and that is probably right. Stormwater harvesting and recycling is one of the big opportunities for South Australia and it has been missed by this government. Why? I really do not understand. Salisbury City Council has been working on it for 20 years. It has proved the concept and has it happening. The CSIRO has been working on and completed a four-year study into the project at Parafield Airport. It has proved that stormwater can be cleaned up in a simple way by putting it through a simple reed bed filter system, injected into the aquifer and extracted at a later date, and it is of good enough quality to put straight into our reticulated water supply.

One of the problems with recycling water is getting it to that quality so that we do not have to duplicate the water distribution network, because that comes at a huge cost. It has been proved, it is working and it is happening, yet the government refuses to go there. In fact, we had the Treasurer saying only this week that, 'We've looked at that; it doesn't work; it costs too much; it's not worth doing.'

Then we had the Minister for Water Security yesterday trying to tell Leon Byner on FIVEaa that, 'No; that's not what the Treasurer said. No; we've done this and this and this.' She used the royal 'we'. The Salisbury City Council has done it and a number of other councils are working on it. There is a sleeper coming towards this government because, as we know, about $250 million to $300 million—it varies a little year to year—goes directly from SA Water profits into the coffers of the state Treasury.

What will happen if the councils across South Australia manage to harvest and inject 80 or 90 gigalitres of stormwater into the aquifers and then sell it to householders and businesses, schools etc., who are the very client base of SA Water? That will have an impact on the state budget. Even if the Treasurer thinks it is a dumb idea; even if the Treasurer cannot get his mind around it, he should consider the impact of what the local councils are working on and the impact that that will have on SA Water's budget. He should consider it for that reason if no other, even if he is not interested in water security for this city. That is a doozy.

It took us nearly 12 months to make the government understand that desalination was necessary for Adelaide. It has not been quite that long since we have been highlighting stormwater, but it is getting that way. Hopefully, the government will understand the error of its ways and it will move to recycling of stormwater, albeit much later than it should but, hopefully, the government will get off its hands and start doing the sort of thing that governments should be doing.

What is this government doing? Lo and behold, I was watching television on Sunday night and I saw the Premier's face on the screen. I was somewhat overjoyed. Here again, as I said much earlier, he is proclaiming that it is the worst drought ever, that it is accelerating climate change. He acknowledged that there had been decades of overuse, but he blamed the other states and he omitted to talk about the lack of action in South Australia. He omitted to tell the people in South Australia that he has known about this since 2001-02—2002 at least—and made that significant speech to the National Press Club in 2003 in which he said all the things he would do.

He admitted in his TV campaign that he has known about this ever since he has been in government and has failed to act. He has failed to do any of the things that I have been talking about. The Premier goes on in the advert to claim that he was successful in fighting for an independent authority. Let me just refer to the Intergovernmental Agreement in schedule A—I think it is on page 41—where it talks about the amendments required to the water act. Clause 1 states:

d. amending provisions relating to the development of the Basin Plan to provide for review by Basin State Ministers;

The coup de grace here is having an independent authority to develop a whole of basin plan—and I remember the Premier saying that he would not hand control from one set of politicians to another; that is what he has claimed he has achieved—but the Intergovernmental Agreement that he signed states that one of the amendments that he would have to make to the federal water act (and this will be upheld and the provisions will be made by legislation which we believe will be introduced in this parliament later this month) is, and I quote:

d. amending provisions relating to the development of the Basin Plan to provide for review by Basin State Ministers;

It sounds to me as if the politicians will still be there; basin state ministers, last time I thought about it, were politicians. So, we are not really getting anywhere. Then the Premier concludes by looking to camera and saying, 'There are no magic bullets, but working together we will save our river.'

Well, I sincerely hope that we can save our river. The reality is that I have no confidence relying on this government to save our river. I have a suggestion. Remember that this is the Premier who said that, when you see a politician on a taxpayer-funded television advertisement, it is really a taxpayer-funded party political advertisement; that is one of the few things that the Premier has said that I totally agree with.

Mr Pengilly: Hang on! What's been on the last couple of nights?

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes; he has got these ads running, which are nothing more than self-promotion at the taxpayers' expense. I say that if the Premier is going to spend taxpayers' money on advertising to benefit the river, to benefit the lakes here in South Australia, how about spending the money in Victoria?

How about spending the money in Melbourne and Sydney? I say that, because one of the benefits of handing over the power to the federal government is that the federal water minister sits around the cabinet table with the federal environment minister, and when the federal water minister makes a decision the federal environment minister will ensure that the environment has a place and is looked after.

Why is the federal environment minister going to do that? Because the people in Sydney and Melbourne are going to insist that that is what happens. That is the only chance that we have. That is the only political clout that we have. That is why, if we are going to spend some money on advertising, let us not spend it on self-promotion, Premier; spend it in Sydney and Melbourne where it might have an impact on those people who are going to force a future federal environment minister and a future federal water minister to look after the environment of the river, the Lower Lakes and the Murray Mouth, because that is what we need.

Yesterday the Premier made a ministerial statement which was headed, 'Referral of powers', and said, 'We are going to introduce legislation and we are going to refer powers.' The Premier did that because, ever since the MOU was signed off on back in March, the opposition has been calling for a genuine referral of powers from all states, so that we do not have a sham independent body: we have a genuine independent body to advise the federal minister, and set up in a way that the federal minister will be obliged to take that advice and act on it. We said that the only way we will achieve that is if the states have to refer all their decision-making powers.

The Premier comes in here in an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes, and the eyes of South Australians, by heading his ministerial statement 'Referral of powers'. The only powers that have been referred are the ones that will allow for the administrative changes to form the new Murray-Darling Basin authority from the existing organisations. That is the referral of powers that he is talking about, the ones that are in the IGA, the ones that do not deliver what he would have us believe it will deliver. The premier goes on and states:

Importantly, the new arrangements recognise critical human water needs as the highest priority water use.

When I hear the Minister for Water Security and the Premier say things like that, I think, 'Wow! Critical human water needs are going to be guaranteed by the basin states.' Of course, as shadow minister I go and actually read the document. Let me read page 31 of the Intergovernmental Agreement that our Premier signed off on. Paragraph 7.4 states:

The parties agree that the provisions of conveyance water to enable provision of critical human needs will be addressed in the basin plan, together with the arrangements to support jurisdictions to accumulate and store critical human needs.

So, the plan will say, 'Yes, we are going to have enough water; the river is still flowing. So, if somebody owns water in a dam somewhere they can deliver it to where they want it.' That is not unusual, but it then goes on and states:

However, responsibility for securing and providing the volume of water required for critical human needs rests with the respective jurisdictions.

Boom, boom! Good one, Premier! Yet again, the Premier's statement to the house yesterday is all spin and rhetoric, and it belies the reality of the agreement that he signed on 3 July. The reality is that South Australia is still responsible for finding critical human needs water out of its allocation. That is the reality. That is what he signed off on on 3 July. Why does he come in here and tell this place that the new agreement guarantees critical human needs water? It clearly does not. I will leave members to draw their own conclusions on that matter.

We have talked about the Lakes, and we have talked about Adelaide's water supply. In the few minutes left to me I will talk about the biggest disaster facing this state, in my opinion, and that is what will befall growers of horticultural crops in the Riverland, the Murraylands and around the Lower Lakes over the next summer. We have something like 70,000 hectares of irrigated agriculture. About 85 per cent of that is irrigated out of the River Murray, of which about 85 per cent is permanent plantings—grapevines, nut trees, avocados, olives—

The Hon. R.J. McEwen: Citrus.

Mr WILLIAMS: A huge area of citrus. We are going to see a disaster in that industry this year. Last year those irrigators had to spend money to buy water. The Advertiser suggested in the past week or so that they spent $55 million. My best information is that they spent somewhere between $80 million and $100 million buying in temporary water.

The Hon. R.J. McEwen: 200.

Mr WILLIAMS: The minister for agriculture says $200 million, and he probably knows more than I do. The reality of the impact that had on individual growers is that most of those businesses that went through that exercise last year, whether they be companies or partnerships —and remember the impact that government announcements had on the price of water; I will not go over that area again, as I have told the house number of times about that—was that they dipped into their equity. As I predicted quite a while ago, it turns out that most of them dipped into their equity to an extent that they cannot do it again, so we have hundreds and hundreds of growers across the Riverland, Murraylands and the Lower Lakes who face ruin.

That is bad enough in itself but, when they face ruin, the water will be switched off to their crops, their permanent plantings—something like 60,000 hectares of permanent plantings—and, if they are valued at $20,000 a hectare, that is $1.2 billion worth of capital asset that is under threat. I believe that to save that, it would need a minimum intervention by the state government of probably $30 million to $50 million. That would save it. That would not grow a crop: that would save that capital asset. I think that the state government should be out there telling those growers that that is what it is going to do. I think the state government should be at least as generous to those hundreds of growers as it was to the workers at Mitsubishi.

Bear in mind that I believe this is a state asset. Those crops do not only provide for the individual growers: they provide a huge amount of economic benefit to the state. They underpin those communities along the river. If we allow that to fail, it will be a very dark day for this state. Last year I called on the government to intervene in the market to buy water with the growers' money on their behalf to iron out the market fluctuations that were being caused by market failure. The government said, 'No, we are not going to intervene'. The market did fail last year; the market will fail again this year; but, more importantly, those growers do not have the equity to do what is necessary to save those crops. South Australia stands to lose a significant proportion. We lost about 10 per cent of the citrus last year. We will lose a lot more than that this year, and it will not be just citrus: it will be right across the board. It is a dark day for South Australia.

Mr RAU (Enfield) (11:59): I join with other members in congratulating the Governor on his speech and I look forward to the many matters that he raised in his speech being the subject of further discussion and activity over the balance of this term of parliament. I want to talk briefly about a couple of issues, the first one being the matter of water.

Obviously, I was listening with some interest to the member for MacKillop. The issue about the River Murray basin and the implications of the water shortage presently is a very serious matter for people in South Australia, but I am not sure that everybody appreciates that it is a serious matter for people all over the country. I am very disappointed that, from time to time, uninformed or ill-informed or fairly unhelpful comments have been put into the media by people which have the effect of pumping up the expectations of individuals who are in genuine crisis and hardship, as has been described by the member for MacKillop, or even worse than pumping up their expectations unfairly, identifying villains and demons elsewhere at whom they can direct their anger.

I have been fortunate enough, as a part of my activities with the Natural Resources Committee, to be able to travel to many parts of the Murray-Darling Basin with a number of my parliamentary colleagues in both chambers and from both of the major parties; and, indeed, the Australian Democrats are members of that committee. I have to say that in every community we have visited we have been very well received, because they have been pleased that people from South Australia have bothered to come to have a look at their circumstances. Not only that, every place we have visited has been to a varying degree suffering the same thing that we are suffering here.

There are regional towns and communities all over the Murray-Darling Basin where people do not have jobs, where seasonal work opportunities do not exist, where the towns are contracting in terms of their population and business activity, and where farmers are finding that they are unable to secure water for their activities. This economic squeeze is not something which begins at the South Australian border. It is going on through the length and breadth of the River Murray Basin and the Darling, for that matter.

I think it is important in relation to this discussion to understand a couple of things. First, across the basin essentially two different kinds of water are available. There is high security water, which is the water upon which most of our people in the Riverland are dependent, and there is low security water, which tends to be for water allocations, particularly in New South Wales. The difference is basically this: historically, a person with a high security water licence has been able to fairly expect to get 100 per cent of their allocation, year in and year out. A person with that sort of allocation is able to make a very different investment decision in relation to the type of crop that they will grow than can a person who has low security water, who will have no guarantee that they will have water every year. Indeed, they might budget on having water only every second or third year, depending on their particular business model or what particular water licence they might hold.

The basic equation is very simple. You require two elements: land and water. You combine the two, you add a farmer, who puts in a crop, and you get productivity. That productivity produces wealth and it feeds communities and it feeds our nation, and it means that we produce products here which we did not have to import. All of that is very good, but I think people need to appreciate that, if your particular mix of land and water as a farmer is low security water with your land, you can not invest in a citrus grove, for example. You cannot invest in grapevines, pecan nuts, or anything else for that matter, because you do not know whether you are going to get water in any particular year and, if you are not going to get it in any particular year, you do not know how many years you will have to wait to get it. So those farmers invest in annual crops. They could be anything—corn, cotton, rice or wheat.

This really brings me to one of the many furphies that I think are floating around the place at the moment, which is that all of our problems are caused by cotton farmers and rice farmers. I say that it is a furphy because of this: each farmer has a certain amount of water and a certain amount of land. The farmer also has access to the prices, at any given time, of different grains and fibres. The farmer makes a decision—looking at the prices, looking at the land and looking at the water—'What can I plant on this land to get the biggest return for the amount of water that I've got?' Sometimes, when they go through that equation the answer will be cotton. Sometimes, when they go through that equation the answer will be rice. Sometimes, it might surprise people (it certainly surprised me) that at Cubbie Station this year it is irrigated wheat—12,000 hectares of irrigated wheat.

In fact, 0.1 per cent of Australia's whole wheat crop will be harvested within the next few weeks at Cubbie Station, where they are now building containing silos that are so vast that they are using earthmoving equipment to build them. They will hold the 100,000 tonnes of wheat they are growing there at the moment.

Everybody seems to think Cubbie Station is a cotton farm. It is not necessarily a cotton farm: it is an irrigation farm, and it grows whatever is the most profitable crop at the time the water happens to be available. This can get down to even the time of year the water arrives. One must remember that this is low-security water and that they do not know when or if they will get water at any time.

If they get a flood event in June or July, it might mean that the appropriate crop to plant in August or September is sorghum, for instance, but I do not know, as I am not an agricultural scientist; the minister may know better than I do. The time line might mean that the crop has to be sorghum. If they get the rain in November, the time line might mean that the crop should be cotton, wheat or something else.

These people are opportunistic farmers. I do not mean that in a pejorative sense but in the sense that they take advantage of the water when it is there. The problem (if there is any problem with Cubbie Station and these other places) is not a farmer who makes the choice, 'I will do the best I can economically by combining my land with my water and producing a crop for sale.' That is not the problem. The problem is whether they should have had the water allocation in the first place, because it is the water allocation that is the essential ingredient in the equation.

It is no good blaming the farmer when they are given two of the three elements as static—that is, the water allocation and the land—for making the most intelligent decision about which crop to put in. That is not their fault. They are actually doing the right thing. It is a mistake to target cotton and rice per se as the villains of the piece: they are not, as such. The question is whether or not the water allocation for some of these properties is accurate, reasonable or sustainable. That is the question.

Climate change is a matter that continues to be the subject of debate. I ask members for a moment to assume, for the purpose of the argument, that there is no such thing as climate change. In those circumstances, we are at the moment obviously in a drought—a long and historically severe drought. There was probably one in the 1940s that compares with this, and the Federation drought probably compares with this, but in those times, of course, water usage out of the river system was nowhere near what it is now. It was completely different.

We are in a situation where we are having an historically bad episode. Even without climate change, this episode has demonstrated that we have unsustainable water allocations across the basin. We have now got to the point where, in one of these serious drought events, the water allocation policy and processes have failed the system. If it goes on much longer, it will fail the system more.

The water allocation policy has been the province of four separate jurisdictions: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. To some extent, historically, each of them has dealt with this as though it were a river that began and ended at their border. That cannot continue and, hopefully, the new arrangements will ensure that it does not continue.

However, water allocation policy is the critical element here. If, contrary to the assumption I have just asked members to embrace, climate change is, in fact, occurring, it only makes the water allocation anomaly even more of a concern because it means that these climatic events we are experiencing now will be either more frequent or, when they occur, more prolonged, or the wet periods will be less frequent or less wet. Whichever way you look at it, there will be less water in the system over a long period, and this brings us back to the same point: the water allocation aspect is the key element in all this.

None of these answers will be easy, but I think it is important for everyone up and down the river to understand that the whole Murray-Darling Basin is actually a single community of interest, and they need to start seeing themselves as being in a community of interest. They are all people whose livelihood depends on the river system. They all live in towns where the prosperity of the town is dependent upon the agriculture and other activities dependent on the river system. If they start looking at things in a more global fashion as communities, the chance of having an intelligent response to all of this, which will share the burden—and perhaps some of the benefits, and I will come to that in a minute—of this across the basin in an equitable way.

I would like to say in a positive light that members of the Natural Resources Committee, who have travelled interstate have spoken to people in their own communities, said to them, 'Would you be interested in coming to South Australia to see what is going on down there?' A group of them, when asked whether they are interested in doing that said, 'Yes, we will. We will pay our own way. We will come to South Australia and have a look at what's going on there'—and 30-odd people from New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria came down to South Australia last week.

I thank the member for Hammond, because he was extremely helpful in assisting me and the committee and those irrigators in understanding the issues in the lower part of the river, which is obviously his electorate. He did a tremendous job not only in answering questions from these people from interstate but also by being completely non-partisan, and I congratulate and applaud him for that; that was excellent.

Likewise, I thank the member for Finniss. Unfortunately, due to the time line (we enjoyed ourselves so much with the member for Hammond), we did not get to enjoy the member for Finniss quite as long as we might have. Equally, he did a tremendous job of showing these people what was going on in his part of the electorate, down at Goolwa, where they could see some of the implications of the current water shortages.

I have to say that I was very pleased that those people came down from interstate, and I was very pleased that they had an opportunity to see what was going on in that part of South Australia. I was very pleased with some of the dairy farmers and other irrigators that the member for Hammond was able to introduce to members of the committee and to members of the visiting irrigators group. All of them gave a very good, objective account of the difficulties they were experiencing. I think that was an important sharing exercise—for the people upstream to realise, 'Look, here's a real person; he's got a real business just like I have. He's having these difficulties; I understand where he's coming from.' I think that is very important.

From my point of view, unfortunately, a couple of the other people who addressed our visitors were a little more, shall I say, accusatory in their approach. Their message was not wrong; it was 'Look, we are passionately concerned about the lakes.' Everyone in this parliament and everyone in South Australia is concerned. However, I am a little sorry that they did not appreciate that they were talking to visitors who had come there with goodwill and who were interested in hearing about the problems, not being told that they were the cause of them. But, anyway, you have to take the rough with the smooth, and I think that, on balance, it was a good exercise. But it is an example of what I am saying. Here you have people from the far end of the basin coming down to talk to the other end of the basin. The more of that that goes on and the more that these people understand that they have common interests and that everything is interconnected, the more likely it is that we are going to have a sustainable and sensible outcome for all of this.

I pick up on the member for MacKillop's remarks about the people of the Riverland. Everyone is obviously deeply concerned about their position, but it comes back to the point about low and high security water. Their business model is based on the fact that they are going to have 100 per cent water allocation year in year out, they can afford to plant a tree, which is going to take five years before it bears any fruit at all and may be 15 years old before it is maximising its production and then run for another 20 years—and their business model is based on that particular projection. The only thing that can mess that up is not having water, because the plant dies.

They are in a terrible position, but we need to understand that they are not the only ones. There are people just across the border, in Mildura, in Victoria, who are having the same problems. In New South Wales, up around the Bourke area, grapevines are sitting in dust bowls; they are just sticks, because the allocations have been cut. These high security water allocations have been cut back 67 per cent. There are citrus trees around Bourke that are dead.

We can say from South Australia, 'Goodness me! What were they doing giving them a water allocation in Bourke in the first place?' That might be a fair question for us to ask with the benefit of hindsight. The point is that those farmers were given that allocation. They invested their time and their money based on that allocation. They planted trees, those permanent crops, using what was a rational business plan, namely, 'We are going to have permanent secure water allocations here so that we can get on with doing this business.' They were not doing the wrong thing. They do not deserve what they are getting either.

I come back to the point that everybody is having a tough time. Any sort of snake oil solution to this will only lead to heartbreak and more tragedy for the people who are already suffering great difficulties. We need to be as objective as we possibly can, and we need to dispense with rubbish and try to focus on facts. Some of the rubbish is that somewhere up there—'up there' being an unknown place—there is a huge volume of water just waiting to pulse down here and change our lives.

I cannot claim to have looked in every nook and cranny up and down the Murray-Darling Basin, nor can any member of that committee, but I can tell you that we have had a pretty good look around. If there is a huge pile of water sitting up there somewhere, these towns are going to remarkable lengths to hide it. They are closing their Woolworths store because they do not have enough people in the town anymore to go shopping; they have more 'For sale' signs in the streets than you can possibly imagine; and they have cotton gins mothballed. It is the biggest deception since D-Day, if that is what is going on. The truth is that it is not going on. The government of New South Wales is not letting its rural towns and communities die so that it can hide water. It is not happening. We just need to be a bit realistic about this. Everybody has the problem.

Another one of these furphies is, 'Let's buy Cubbie Station, because Cubbie Station has a 450 megalitre capacity.'

Mr Venning: Gig.

Mr RAU: I beg your pardon: it has a 450 gigalitre capacity, which is the same as Sydney Harbour. Again, a couple of weeks ago, we were at Cubbie Station, and the owners were kind enough to take us around and show us what they are doing. The scale of that place is something that is difficult to comprehend until you see it, but they have about 20,000-odd hectares of laser-levelled land. At the moment they have 12,000 hectares under irrigated wheat, which is something I had never heard of.

They have storage capacities there for 450 gigalitres, and the storage holders—the dams—have walls which are probably eight or nine metres high and wide enough to drive a four-wheel-drive comfortably across the top of them. These walls go for 10 kilometres in one direction and probably a kilometre and a half in another. They are cut up into cells. They have only two cells partially full at the moment. We drove along the narrow gap between those two cells and the owner, who was sitting next to me in the car, said, 'The cell on the left-hand side is 1,800 hectares, and the cell on the right-hand side is 1,500 hectares.' They are just the dams, and they are not all the dams: they are the two that are partly full at the moment. The trees are left inside the dams. The dams are full of trees, because the dead trees keep the waves down. They are so big they have two metre waves in there.

This an industrial-scale enterprise; it is not farming in any sense that I have previously comprehended it. But why is it there? Because, at some point in time, a state government sold or gave a water allocation to an individual or a group of individuals—in this case it is a group. The present Cubbie Station is an amalgam of 12 previously independent licences on that one big property, and they harvest according to their licences when they get water. They have not had any for years—although they got a bit because of some rain last summer.

You might say, 'What a terrible thing is Cubbie Station!' That may or may not be a reasonable comment to make, but do not blame the farmer who has bought the land, received the water entitlement and invested his own money to convert that into something which enables him to grow a product. Do not blame him for that: blame the water allocation, if you like, but do not blame the farmer.

The Hon. R.J. McEwen interjecting:

Mr RAU: The next point is: can you let it go from Cubbie? That is another interesting point. Cubbie is all gravity fed. The water comes into the storages by gravity feed out of the flood plain. It goes out of the storages onto the agricultural zones by gravity feed. There is no way it will go uphill. I do not know how you could get it out of there in any case but, leaving that aside, if you released that water you are talking about releasing something in South-East Queensland that would have to run the gauntlet of the whole Darling part of the Murray-Darling Basin, and that would involve dealing with all the transmission losses, all the evaporation losses and all the other people along the way who have a water entitlement and who would then, by virtue of that particular amount of water coming past their door, be legitimately entitled, under their allocation, to take some of that water; and, by the time it got down here, you would be lucky to get a cupful. There is another furphy exploded: the idea of 'Buy Cubbie and the world will change'—that is nonsense.

I am not saying and I am not trying to say that Cubbie is a fantastic thing. It is probably an example of a foolish allocation of water. However, it brings you back to the same point, that the allocations are the real issue: are they sustainable allocations? If they are not sustainable allocations then something needs to be done about it.

The other furphy is when people ask, 'Why don't you go out and buy some water?' I come back to the issue of high and low-security licences, high and low-security water. If you are going to buy low-security water, you might as well buy fresh air. You are buying fresh air in a dam, because there is no low-security water. All you are doing is buying a futures contract; you are buying a contract which says, 'In the future, if it rains enough for this particular allocation to be activated, you will get it.' That is what it says; nothing more and nothing less. It will not deliver one drop of water—not one. If you buy high-security water, the question is: who is going to sell it to you? Most of the high-security water people, who have any at all, desperately need it for their own purposes.

The Hon. R.J. McEwen interjecting:

Mr RAU: Exactly. Even those people do not have 100 per cent of their high-security allocation, depending on where you are buying from—whether you are buying from South Australia or from the Murrumbidgee area or wherever. Even if you get that percentage of low-security water, again, if it is released into the system how much of it is going to wind up down here? We need to wake up and face reality. This is a serious problem and there is no simple quick fix, unless somebody has a trunk line to the Almighty and can persuade Him to drop immense amounts of water from South-East Queensland, through New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia in a biblical-scale flood over the next few months. Let us have 1956 again; that would be a good thing. So, it will be difficult: it will not be easy.

The one thing I would say to members is please try to keep away from the glib stuff and focus on the facts; focus on the reality of this thing. It is very bad. Making up simple solutions reminds me of a few years ago, when Joh Bjelke-Petersen reckoned he had found a bloke who could run a car on water. Every few years another specialist who reckons he can cure cancer by some obscure method throws himself up, and all these poor individuals are tormented by those types of people. There is a similar sort of snake oil type atmosphere circling a bit around this. We have to get away from that and just get to the facts—and the facts are not very nice, but we ignore them at our peril. That is probably a little more than I wanted to say about water, but I think it is important that we try to get our feet on the ground about water.

The last thing I would like to say is that I was really pleased to see on the television a couple of weeks ago that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have embraced what strikes me as a very refreshing and positive view about education in our schools. I was particularly impressed, because I think it is important for the education system to have a focus that puts the students front and centre, gives due consideration to the wishes and aspirations of their parents and tries to focus on ensuring that the standard of education that an individual receives, whether they be in one of the more affluent electorates in South Australia or Sydney or anywhere else, or whether in an electorate like the member for Napier's or mine, is exactly the same. I think that aspiration is a very important and positive one.

For my part, if that ruffles a few feathers along the way, maybe those feathers need to be ruffled. Those students and families deserve and need the best possible outcomes they can have, because I think history has shown that the only way there is any real chance of people breaking out of the cycles of poverty or real social difficulty is for them to have a decent educational opportunity. I applaud the federal government for that, and I look forward to those initiatives working their way through the system.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (12:28): I also wish to place on record my congratulations to His Excellency for the way in which he delivered his speech during the opening of this session of parliament. I wish him well in his role as Governor. There is no doubt that the biggest issue facing South Australia and Australia is water. I do not intend to discuss that topic during my contribution. The members for MacKillop and Enfield have discussed it at some length, and I know that the members for Hammond and Finniss, whose electorates cover the Murray, will no doubt respond with far better local knowledge than mine.

I want to take more of a traditional approach to the Address in Reply and cover some of the portfolio areas for which I am currently the shadow minister, deal with some local electorate issues and then make a couple of comments about some other matters that are of interest to me. The portfolio issues will not take long, because I am the shadow minister for gambling, social inclusion, consumer affairs, government enterprises and volunteers.

Four of those five topics did not get mentioned in the Governor's speech. That is not a criticism of the Governor, because we all know that the speech is signed off by cabinet and delivered to His Excellency for him to give to the parliament. There is nothing to which to respond in relation to those issues as far as the speech is concerned.

I want to make a couple of comments in relation to consumer affairs. Frankly, consumer affairs is not a priority of this government. Everything is under review. I notice that the government has just changed the minister. The minister today has adopted an opposition policy in relation to the reintroduction of waivers for recreational groups. While we support the reintroduction of waivers for recreational groups, I cannot understand why the government has taken so long to act on this matter. The opposition introduced legislation four or five months ago. Groups were complaining to the minister well before that and, frankly, the disinterest of the minister and the government has done a disservice to South Australian recreational groups. It appears that the government, as a result of opposition pressure, has decided to reintroduce waivers—which will be a positive.

In relation to gambling, the parliament in the next few months will face the issue of the abolition of the price cap on the sale of pokies. Currently, there is a price cap of about $50,000 on the sale of poker machines or their entitlements. The government is considering removing the cap. This will be a conscience vote for members of the Liberal Party, so every member will be able to express their own view. It will be interesting to see what the parliament thinks of the concept of removing the price cap. Common sense says that, if we remove the price cap, the price will find the market price, and that is more likely to be one which could be afforded by the big end of town (that is, Coles, Woolworths and the pokie barons) rather than the little end of town.

I have not seen the government's final proposition, so I am talking from a matter of principle rather than detail. If that is the case, then common sense would suggest that the big end of town would have more opportunity to buy the poker machines than the small end of town. That is likely to be the case. It is also likely to be the case that the poker machines that are sold will be the low performing, low profit machines. They will be purchased by those who can afford the market price and put into areas where, hopefully, for the business model—and I say business will think hopefully—they will go into high profit, high turnover areas.

This is a strategy to reduce problem gambling. According to the government, the low profit, low turnover machines will be purchased by the big end of town and put into areas where they become high turnover, high profit machines and, therefore, reduce problem gambling. I think there are issues with the argument that the government is putting forward. I look forward to receiving the final detail of the proposition in due course, but I have some concern about this principle of the abolition of the cap and what the real motive behind it might be.

In relation to my local electorate, the issues have not changed largely over the past couple of years when I have given this address, because the government simply has not invested any money into the issues which the electorate of Davenport has put before the parliament or the government. As I said yesterday in a grievance, the road infrastructure is poor and needs to be fixed for road safety and traffic management reasons and fire evacuation purposes. A number of schools need sports halls. Hawthorndene Primary School and Flagstaff Hill Primary School need an investment in decent sports halls.

The Eden Hills Primary School is currently in negotiations with the government about the placement of an extra classroom. The government wants to put it on one site; the school community wants to put it on a different site. There is about a $40,000 to $50,000 cost difference in that, and the government wants to charge the school the $40,000 or $50,000 to put it on the site of the school's choice. We are working through that issue with the Eden Hills Primary School.

I was pleased that the federal Labor Party adhered to its promise to commit $3 million in relation to the rail freight bypass study which is about looking at moving the freight line north. I have been the strongest advocate of that particular study and proposal for four or five years, and I am pleased that the federal Labor Party has kept its promise and delivered that money. It looks as though the study will be completed in September 2009, which means both major parties can put to the 2010 federal election their commitments in relation to moving that freight line north of Adelaide.

Another issue is that of pensioners. Davenport has many pensioners. It seems to me that pensioners have been a somewhat forgotten group. As parliaments all around Australia continue to add regulation after regulation to business or the community generally, that has significantly increased costs to pensioner groups who are on fixed incomes and who really have very limited flexibility as to how they can cover extra costs. A good example of that will be the carbon tax that the federal government will impose through the carbon reduction program (or whatever its latest trendy name). Ultimately, that will increase the price of public transport, electricity and consumer goods because businesses will be paying a tax and that will be passed onto the consumer. That will all flow through to pensioners who are on fixed incomes.

The Rudd government, in what I think will be a pretty cynical exercise, will increase the pension in the next budget, there is no doubt about that. You do not get the federal Treasurer, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister saying that they could not live on the single pension unless they are laying the groundwork to announce an increase in the single pension. The question is: will the increase in the single pension simply be an increase to cover the cost of the carbon tax or will it be an increase to cover the carbon tax plus CPI; that is, any actual real increase above the cost of living and the extra cost of the carbon tax? If it is only an increase to the cover the carbon tax, then it is simply a cynical exercise, and again like the member for Enfield said, there is a bit of a snake oil salesman about that type of announcement, if that is what it ends up being. I will be watching that with some interest because many pensioners in Davenport are struggling with the cost of living: it is as simple as that.

I raise two other issues which have been brought to my attention over the past six months or so. One is Steve Burgess. I appeared on the Stateline program a few weeks ago in relation to Mr Burgess's case. An investigation was conducted into Mr Burgess by Families SA. Eventually he received a letter that was meant to be a letter of apology. However, the letter did not include the word 'apology' or 'sorry', but they tell him it is a letter of apology. He was cleared of an allegation of rape. The reason Mr Burgess can speak about this is that he did not sign a confidentiality agreement. He was offered his legal costs on the basis that he signed a confidentiality agreement and did not speak about it. The problem I have with this policy is: how many cases of sexual abuse that have not been sustained are covered up by the signing of a confidentiality agreement?

How many confidentiality agreements have been signed each year for the last 10 years, under Liberal and Labor governments? I am sure it went on under the Liberal government. This is not a Labor/Liberal thing, as far as I am concerned: it is simply a matter of what the parliament is allowed to know and what the parliament is not allowed to know.

If Mr Burgess did not have the courage not to sign the confidentiality agreement, the parliament would not know of this case. I do not know whether there is one other case out there, or a thousand; I have no idea. I do not know whether the parliament knows: I suspect it does not. I am not even sure the minister knows. So, I have written to the Auditor-General, bringing this matter of policy to his attention and seeking advice on whether there is some way of improving the system so that the parliament is better informed.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: I recall a confidentiality agreement which you were the beneficiary of.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Let's talk about that. Let the parliament talk about that.

The SPEAKER: Order! The Attorney will come to order.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: I am not sure that I have ever signed a confidentiality agreement, Attorney.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Really?

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: I do not recall one. I have signed one?

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: You are the beneficiary.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: The Attorney is on the record now as having said that. That is fine. All I am saying, Attorney, and to the house, is: can this area of the administration of the law in Families and Communities be better improved? I invite you to look at the Steve Burgess case and see whether you are comfortable with whether he was treated fairly.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: That is your point. I just want you to be consistent.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: The other issue relates to the Easling matter, and I have raised the Easling matter publicly, so I will not going go into great detail about it here. I did not really intend to use this Address in Reply debate today to talk about the Easling matter. To my mind, it is really quite simple. Every non-government MP now agrees there should be an inquiry into the Tom Easling matter. There are three or four key principles, I think, that drive me to the conclusion that there needs to be an inquiry.

Should investigators be required to take notes of investigations? If any of the Labor MPs or their family members are being investigated, I think they would say it is a fair thing that the investigator should take notes. If the investigators do take notes, I think most people would say that those notes should be kept and not shredded. I also think that when the people are being interviewed the tape recorder should be turned on for the whole of the interview. I think most people would think that fair.

I am standing before a banner put up in the parliament about women's suffrage, and there is a slogan at the bottom that says 'Equal before the law'. I encourage people to consider whether an investigation of that type really does make all of us equal before the law. Some people will say it does not matter because this was not a police investigation, but I question that. I think it fair that the tape recorder be turned on for the whole of the interview, and I think it fair that notes not be shredded, and I think it fair that notes should be taken during investigations.

If members opposite, in their consideration of my request for an inquiry, share that concern, I encourage them to make it known to those who matter that the inquiry should be held, because I do not think any South Australian should have to endure an inquiry that has those qualities about it.

I will not touch today on the comments of Mr Pallaras about my taking up this matter, particularly his comments about the morality of my taking up this particular matter, because we all know in this place that we are here to take up matters on behalf of our constituents. Whether that be easy or hard, at the end of the day we are their representatives and we need to take up the matter if we think that some matters were unfair. I say to members of this house that, regardless of their view of Mr Easling or the allegations against him, the court acquitted him.

I am sure that the Attorney will tell members that there were 20 counts: two counts were acquitted under instruction of the judge; 12 counts were acquitted unanimously; and six counts were acquitted by majority. The court made its decision about Mr Easling, and what I am simply asking the government to do is to make a judgment about the quality of the investigation. Anyone who is investigated by government, whether that be the native vegetation branch, or whatever (and there are plenty of inspectors out there in government), surely they have the right to see the notes of the interview, surely they have the right to know that the whole of the interview was taped and surely they have the right to know that notes were even taken during the interview.

Those sorts of issues, I think, are very serious matters. My view is that, if we allow that investigation to go past without an inquiry, there is a message to the investigating agencies in that, and the message is: 'It's okay.' Well, regardless of what Mr Pallaras thinks of Iain Evans, the member for Davenport, whether I am courageous indeed or whether I am a fool, the reality is that I do not accept that style of investigation. I simply do not think it is fair or just. At the end of the day, the government—and I am not saying the political wing of government here, I am saying the prosecution and its investigating agencies—threw everything it had at Mr Easling. They left no stone unturned, and he was acquitted.

However, I ask members of the Labor Party, the government (who I really sincerely hope come on board with this inquiry): if you or your family were being investigated, would you accept notes being shredded? Would you accept interviews not being fully taped? Would you accept notes simply not being taken? The answer is that I do not think you would. It is from a principled position that I take up this issue. If it does not make me popular in some areas of the government, so be it, but I think that some questions need to be asked about exactly what went on in that agency at that time. If the parliament does not ask the questions, then who do we expect to? Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (12:49): I also rise to congratulate His Excellency the Governor on his speech delivered yesterday to the joint sitting of the parliament, and I acknowledge very strongly that the experience and skill set that he brings to his very important role in South Australia is a key one for our future. The work he has already done in assisting to secure defence industries to be based in this state is acknowledged by all. I have no doubt that, during his period in office, he will perform the role wonderfully to the expectations of all South Australians and carry on the fine tradition of those who have gone before him.

I have read through the speech delivered by the Governor yesterday. Obviously there are a few things that interest me in particular, but I also note that the Governor has strongly reinforced the fact that water is the key challenge facing South Australia in the future. Those who are in here and those who meet with communities all the time would appreciate that water is the top subject that people talk about. They are very concerned about where it is going to come from in future and they are very concerned about their own needs. If they are people who rely upon water to derive their income, it is of key concern.

I do not profess to have detailed knowledge about it. The community that I serve is supplied predominantly by pipes from the River Murray. Some communities access their water supply through SA Water mains which come from underground water supplies. Having spoken to people not only in the electorate that I serve but in other parts of the state (and I have had some quite detailed conversations with people from the Riverland), it is obvious to me that everybody is very concerned about it. It has become a national issue. It really has made people realise that what we have done traditionally in this great state over many years will probably have to change enormously. Will the industries that have grown up over the last 50 or 60 years in some areas be able to continue? There are so many uncertainties.

We talk about high security and low security water. I acknowledge that the member for MacKillop spoke at length in his address on water needs, as did the member for Enfield, who possesses detailed knowledge as chair of the Natural Resources Committee and the investigations that that committee has undertaken. The member for Hammond, from the opposition's side of the chamber, is very passionate and espouses the water issues that face SA and, indeed, the nation on a constant basis, as does the member for Finniss. Given that they serve communities that are affected by the River Murray in some way, they will ensure that our side of parliament is as aware as is humanly possible—from the information that they obtain from so many different sources—of the issues and what we as a party need to formulate as our policy position on these matters.

I note that, later in his speech, His Excellency the Governor referred to the desal plant. It is good that the government finally made an announcement on it; however, I find it frustrating that, when in January last year the member for Davenport, as leader of the opposition at that stage, announced that the Liberal Party wished to have a desalination plant built in Adelaide, it was criticised. We used the experience of Western Australia—where I believe a 45 gigalitre plant was constructed at a cost of $320 million for the plant and $67 million to connect it to the storage and pipe networks—as an example of what could be achieved in South Australia. My recollection is that that would have created the capacity to source approximately 23 per cent of metropolitan Adelaide's water supply (I could be wrong on that), but it is an example of the technology that exists.

Frustratingly, when we announced what was an obvious initiative, the government, through minister Wright who was responsible for the portfolio at the time, said it was not necessary and that we did not need to increase storage and we did not need a desal plant. Now the fact has come home to the government that our water supply really needs to be secured. We must ensure that we have water for the industry needs of the state. We must ensure that we have water for the residential needs of the people who live in this state. Importantly, we must ensure that we have water for the food production needs of this state and that we have water for the environment.

There is no doubt that managing that is an enormous task. It is an absolutely enormous task to try to bring together four states with different needs and very different positions. To reach agreement and have the federal government involved in the discussions really is an enormous challenge, but it has to be overcome. We have to ensure that not only South Australia but also Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland have access to a water supply that allows the communities to continue to flourish. That is what we want to do. We become members of parliament purely because we want to serve our communities. We want to ensure that our communities receive the best possible service from government, because government is the organisation that has the greatest amount of resources to provide those services. Challenges are not easy; I respect that and, the longer that I am in this role, the more I will probably come to appreciate that, but it is one that has to be overcome.

I am pleased to see that there is certainly an ongoing commitment to the effluent treatment and to stormwater use and capture also. Now, there is some diversity of comment. I have read some media releases that talk about the fact that the Treasurer and the Minister for Water Security have somewhat different positions on that. I am not sure what the real situation, but it is important that we actually do use that water because it is a resource there waiting to be used.

Effluent water treatment comes at a cost; there is no doubt about that. For communities that have been in existence for some time, it is a very expensive exercise to suddenly retrofit a town with effluent collection, and I can certainly relate that to the fact that within my own electorate of Moonta, Moonta Bay and Port Hughes there is an enormous project being contemplated at the moment. The council, through funding that has been sourced, has managed to do the design. My recollection is that it is something like a $30 million project. It will collect the effluent water from all of the properties within what is basically one big community now (but has three separate names) and treat that water and make it available for use on parks and reserves, including, as I understand it, part of the Dunes Golf Course development too.

A lot of people within those communities are very upset. As I understand it, the level of funding that is supplied to seed funding that is provided to these projects is not what it was. Whereas previously I think two-thirds of the project was supplied by a central fund handed by government to local government to administer, now it is something like only about 20 or 25 per cent.

That means that property owners actually have to pick up the slack on that. They are the ones that suddenly have to find, in the Moonta, Moonta Bay and Port Hughes situation, a connection cost at the moment of two and a half thousand dollars rising, I think, to $4,500 within a few years and then subject to CPI increases after that, let alone the fact that they also have to be responsible for the cost of connecting from the connection point at the front of their property to wherever their current system might be based on their property.

Given that this community is made up of a lot of older people who have been there for many years and do not have this level of financial capacity to fund these sorts of works—and I have heard quotes given of, say $10,000 or $20,000 for a plumber to actually connect to the effluent scheme—it will be very hard. That said, though, I do support the fact that the project has actually to take place. Where communities are close to the marine environment, there can be no doubt at all that the effluent waste is actually discharging into the marine environment. Moonta, Moonta Bay and Port Hughes market themselves very strongly on the fact that they are water-based communities. They attract an enormous number of tourists. They want to make sure that they preserve that pristine environment that they have and the only way to do that is by ensuring that there is no effluent discharge.

We have had it in place for probably a hundred years, but there are a lot of challenges to making sure that that goes forward, so I would encourage the government to do all it can to actually support communities to a far greater degree than they are at the moment to allow these schemes to occur. It is an easy way. The water is being used but instead of actually letting it just soak away or go to waste, let us make sure that we actually collect it and that are we able to treat it and reuse it.

On stormwater use, that is where I mentioned earlier the diversity of opinion between the Treasurer and the Minister for Water Security. The Liberals have a very strong plan on this. We want to make sure that we collect as much as humanly possible. The plan that we released a few months ago allowed, from recollection, the collection of 80 gigalitres of stormwater per year, and 13 points were going to be established where the water could be treated, cleaned through natural methods, pumped into the aquifer and then recovered as required.

Aquifer storage and recharge is acknowledged technology: it works. The City of Salisbury has demonstrated as well as anybody in the world how it can work and they have commercial markets for the water that they collect and reuse. Let us hope that these sorts of things become a solution or part of the solution to South Australia's water needs. I believe that 80 gigalitres of water is equivalent to about 50 per cent of demands of the metropolitan area.

There is no doubt that the Murray is in crisis. The future capacity for us to use Murray water is an unknown. Let us hope this drought breaks soon, but it is an unknown. We have to ensure that we invest taxpayer funds in schemes that will ensure that we can access a water supply, and stormwater reuse is an important one, as is effluent, as is desal technology.

I also want to comment briefly on the fact that in the Governor's speech there was reference made to South Australia's health system but, interestingly though, I could not actually find any reference at all to the Country Health Care Plan. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.


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


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