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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-07-06 Daily Xml
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MURRAY-DARLING BASIN PLAN

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (16:36): With the imminent release of the guide to the draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan to be released within weeks, players are positioning themselves. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan's water reform to date has been based on the 2007 Water Act and the establishment of a Murray-Darling Basin Authority in 2008.

Its primary role was to develop a basin plan, and that basin plan was to put the Murray-Darling Basin in its entirety back into a viable state, a state of sustainable environment, sustainable food production and fibre production, but also to keep vibrant communities that rely on the rivers and the catchments for the long term.

The authority took over responsibility for all functions of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission in December 2008, and through a consultation program, travelling the communities along the basin, came out with the guide to the proposed basin plan in October 2010.

Once that plan was released it was met with outrage and concern because that plan's foundation was based on the 2007 Water Act. That plan outraged not only the communities, environmentalists and food and fibre producers, it outraged everybody because there was uncertainty. There were numbers put out there but they were all uncertain. What were they based on? That was the question. No-one really gave a direct answer.

Along the way we have seen the resignations of the chairman, the CEO and board members. We have now seen the appointment of a new CEO and board members. The Windsor report, which has come along and analysed and consulted with all of the communities along the basin, has come out with a much more balanced argument.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority really did mislead, within the consultation process, the stakeholders in the lead-up to the guide. There was $38 million spent on the release of that first guide. That is $38 million of taxpayers' money wasted through bad government consultation, bad decision-making and a bad PR exercise with the release of that plan.

Again, the unbalanced approach was based on the Water Act and the badly handled consultation process followed the release of that guide and it left people outraged and with an uncertainty of where their future lay.

We now look at where we are headed. Within the next couple of weeks (two to three weeks) we are going to see volume No. 2 of that basin guide plan come out. What I have seen to date is that we need to have all vested interests working together. It is about the environmental sector, the food and fibre producers and the communities working together for an outcome that will benefit everybody.

We all know that we have to have a healthy, sustainable river in a way that we can have all the people who rely on the river, who grow food and fibre on the river, but also all the people who come up to the basin as tourists, as the support mechanism that keeps the economies vibrant right along the basin.

I have a plea to the media. The media have been very divisive right from the word go. They have taken opinions from the environmental sector, they have taken opinions from the irrigators, and they have also taken opinions from the communities, and they have pitched one against the other, and that has been basically one of the most destructive mechanisms with the introduction of the draft plan.

While the media have been destructive in coming out and pitching those commodities, all those river users against one another, it is division—and, as we all know, division is death. Again, as this plan is about to be released, it must be that we show a united approach. Every South Australian must be united in getting an outcome for the upcoming draft plan. We have to work together to gain an outcome that will benefit everybody. Not everybody is going to be happy, not everybody is going to be a winner, but there has to be a balanced outcome. In doing that, I have a strategic approach that I think we all need to look at and perhaps in some way accept that looking along the river we have a solution.

Time expired.

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