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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
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NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (COMMERCIAL FORESTS) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:38): It is always difficult having a break for a few hours in the middle of delivering a speech in this place, so I have taken the sensible approach of picking up the Hansard transcript of where I left off so that I might start off again in a similar place. Basically, I was talking about the hydrology of the South-East, particularly in relation to the western districts of Victoria and talking about the general flow of groundwater to a westerly direction, certainly in the South Australian part of that region of the Green Triangle and how it is more southerly as you get down south of Mount Gambier where the coastline is in an east-west aspect.

The reason I wanted to talk about the groundwater flows is because I think it is important to understand that, if we see an impact, we can track that impact, because we would expect the impact to move to the west with the general flow of the groundwater. So if we did something in this instance to decrease the amount recharged to the groundwater system at a particular point creating a drawdown or a clone of depression, we would expect that cone of depression to gradually move to the west as the whole of the groundwater system does, and research and monitoring shows that that is the case. When I talk about monitoring, over many years, the whole of the region has been pockmarked with bores, and lot of official bores which were put down originally by the mines department many years ago are monitored on a regular basis, and we have an extensive amount of data with regard to the groundwater system in the South-East.

There are a huge number of private bores in the South-East. The South-East is predominantly used for livestock grazing, and the livestock water is drawn from the groundwater system via simple windmills and tanks, with storage troughs being fed off those tanks. I would hate to hazard a guess at how many bores there are in the South-East. I think most of them these days are registered and known to the department, but I am sure there are many which were put down and which are not registered, but we do have a good body of knowledge.

I talked earlier about when we make decisions and what impact they might have. It is important to understand groundwater hydrology, because I have argued many times that, every time we take an action which discourages or dissuades somebody from planting a commercial forest in the South-East sector of the Green Triangle region in South Australia, by and large, we have found that the investment sitting behind the person who wishes to plant the forest turns up across the border in Victoria, and that is important because that is upstream. If we imagine that we are on a large river, any action that occurs upstream on a river is felt downstream, and that is why I am pointing out that the groundwater system moves from the east to the west so any impact that occurs upstream, you may well expect to find the impact moves downstream. That is exactly what has happened.

I said earlier in my remarks that most of the intensive irrigation has occurred close to the border in that 20-kilometre zone. It has fascinated me that the people involved in those areas have agitated for a significant number of years now for this sort of measure that the minister has brought to the house today in the belief that they might help their own situation. The reality is that most of the afforestation which has occurred recently in the South-East and which has triggered this mindset that we should do something about commercial afforestation has occurred well downstream from that intensive irrigation activity. Most of it has occurred in the hundreds of Coles and Short, well west of Penola, but every time we take a decision which prevents a tree or a farm being converted to afforestation in that area, by and large, we see the investors go to Victoria where it is easier to obtain the land and the approvals, and to plant that forest.

We did not stop the investment into afforestation, all we did was shift it from a place downstream, where most of our concerned irrigators are, to a point which is upstream. I could never understand the mentality of those very same irrigators finding that not only acceptable but doing whatever they could to encourage it. When I say doing what they could, they have been agitating for this sort of measure which is going to work against the afforestation in that portion of South Australia and shift it into Victoria.

Principally, one of the groups who have been agitating for this sort of measuring have been the vignerons at Coonawarra, and they have been complaining because their watertables in Coonawarra have been declining for a significant time. The reality is that the plantations of hardwood forests in the hundreds of Short and Coles are well west of Coonawarra and I would argue would be most unlikely to have any impact on the watertables at Coonawarra at all. However, if you shifted 10 per cent or 15 per cent or 20 per cent of that forest into Victoria, it may well have an impact at a place like Coonawarra.

That is an issue which has always fascinated me. I have had this debate with a number of the people involved—and it is not just the vignerons at Coonawarra, but some of the dairy farmers south of Mount Gambier and some of the potato growers—and they still refuse to accept what I see as just common sense. We have this problem, I believe, that people within government, within the agency, as I said before the lunch break, have this mindset that we should be the leaders in this and that we would establish some bona fides which would enable us to argue a different case altogether on the River Murray; but we also have these vested interests in the South-East who—and I can only describe it as an absurd reason—want to get on the bandwagon, too, but I will come back to that in a little while, because maybe there is a little method in the madness of at least some of them.

Whilst I am talking about the hydrology of the region, again, this matter is coming to a head because, just as we have experienced across the whole of the Murray-Darling Basin a severe drought in recent years, we have experienced significantly lower rainfall in the South-East over that same period. Apart from one season a few years ago, we have not had what would be called generally a drought. The South-East—particularly the mid and lower South-East—is pretty well droughtproof, but we have had lower than normal rainfall in this region for well over 20 years.

Importantly, we have had lower than normal rainfall over that period in the winter months, because what we are actually talking about here is the recharge of the natural rainfall into the groundwater aquifer. Another thing that we need to understand when we are talking about this is that we only get recharge for a few months of the year and it is in those months of the year when the rainfall substantially exceeds the evapotranspiration, that is, we are getting more rain landing on the landscape than the water that is evaporating out of the landscape through natural evaporation from the soil, from surface water from lakes and swamps, etc., or from the leaves of plants.

In the South-East that occurs principally in the months of June, July and August. I would extend in some years a little bit longer than that at either end, but principally in those months we have a considerable excess of rainfall over evapotranspiration, and a considerable amount of that excess percolates through the soil profile and ends up in the watertable and forms what we call recharge.

The argument that has been put forward is that pine forests impact on that recharge to a greater extent than grassland or pasture; therefore, if we want more water to be recharging into the aquifer to sustain irrigation so that we can pump it out again and use it to irrigate, we are better off with more pasture or grassland than we are with forests. That is the simple debate that we are having, which at a very simple level is correct, it makes sense, but we have not looked at some of the other aspects and where we want that balance between land use—whether it is good to have forests or whether it is not good (I am obviously arguing that it is good), and whether the mix of land use that we have now has gone too far one way or not.

That is where the debate should be, and I am going to give some evidence later on to back that up. In the meantime, we are talking about the amount of water that gets into the groundwater system, and that gives us some understanding of how much we can sustainably extract and utilise as irrigation water.

The low rainfall years that we have experienced in recent years in the South-East have seen a significant drawdown of the watertable, of the standing (static) water level. This has been what the NRM board and the department have used as triggers to say, 'We have a problem and we are overallocated.' Interestingly, a couple of years ago, the NRM board was out there saying, 'We are overallocated,' and they were agitating for us to take drastic action. That is what they planned to do in this water allocation plan they have been working on (the one which, as I said earlier, is outside the current law of this state).

Both the NRM board and the department—I am not sure which department—have produced a number of maps of the South-East showing the relative drawdown of the watertable across the landscape in five-year and 10-year periods, and these maps have been used to highlight the problems. I have one map in my hand now which shows the five-year period from September 2004 to September 2009, which is pretty well getting towards the end of this dry period that I was talking about, and it shows a significant drawdown, and the most drawdown for the whole of the region (which includes all of the Upper South-East right down to Port Macdonnell in the south) in the area around the hundreds of Coles and Short. This is an area where we have seen a substantial growth of hardwood plantations. Something in the order of 30,000 or 35,000 hectares, I would estimate, of what was previously grazing land, basically pasture land, has been converted to plantation forests.

Members need to understand that, in this area of the hundreds of Coles and Short the static water level prior to these plantation forests going in was probably only a metre to a metre and a half below the surface. It was very close to the surface—so close, in fact, that, if you get a little bit closer than that (and some of it would be less than a metre), you get, through natural capillary action, the water move up through the soil profile and get to the surface and naturally evaporate from the surface.

After having planted deep-rooted perennial plants in this area, I think it is absolutely amazing that people are surprised that the watertable has been drawn down in this area. I expect nothing less. When you replace a shallow-rooted annual plant, like most of our pasture species are in the region, with a deep-rooted perennial plant, I think there is no surprise that you would draw down the watertable, because the plant will continue to utilise water for 12 months of the year rather than for only eight or nine months of the year. So that is not an unnatural phenomenon.

The map that I refer to shows this drawdown which has caused this panic. I have been asking for a number of years why we are panicking if the watertable is drawn down from 1½ metres or, in some cases, maybe two metres below the surface to six or seven metres below the surface. I do not really see a problem with that, because I know that the watertable is possibly 100 metres or more thick. It is not as though we are going to run out of water. What it actually means is that, if you see the watertable as a tank, we take a bit of water out of the top of it and during winter that is somewhere for the excess rainfall to go and fill the tank. That is what we do with our rainwater tanks at the back of the house every year. Because we have had this series of dry years, the observations are that the tank never recovered—it never filled right up again.

However, I am happy to note what is on the most recent map that I have, which is only a one-year map from September 2009 to September 2010. In the 2008-09 and 2009-10 years (the last two years) we have had relatively wet winters—up around our average—and the red patches on the map which show serious decline in groundwater levels have disappeared. There is still a slight decline in groundwater levels but, interestingly enough, not where they were in the hundreds of Coles and Short but to the west.

So, the cone of depression has indeed moved to the west, as I think we would expect because the whole of the water system is moving to the west, whereas on the previous map from the year before the most serious drawdown was occurring on the eastern side of the hundreds of Coles and Short, it is now occurring to the western side, if not into the next hundred.

Hundreds are areas on the map which are 10 miles by 10 miles, consequently 100 square miles. That is why they are called hundreds. So, that is the area. This cone of depression, we can assume, has probably moved up to 10 miles to the west—not to be unexpected—and the rate of decline, it seems, has tapered off.

The other important thing that I think we need to understand is that the growth in the plantation of blue gums, this hardwood species, was driven by managed investment schemes. Now that we have seen that whole apparatus done away with, we have seen no more plantations. The plantation activity in that area, in the hundreds of Coles and Spence and the surrounding area, has virtually come to a standstill.

It is also worth noting that when you talk to foresters, and these people, by and large, know what they are talking about, they have spent their lifetime doing these sorts of things, I think there is a general acceptance that when the plantations that have been planted in the last 10 or 12 years are clear-felled and harvested that a significant portion of that area will not be replanted to that species.

Some people are suggesting to me that it could be as much as 20 per cent: principally, because the soil type is not best suited for planting that sort of crop. The people who own the land have now decided that they would get a better return from that land by returning it to pasture or putting some other crop on it, but certainly returning it to pasture, I suspect, would be one of the better options.

Notwithstanding that we can see from the latest data a dropping off of the decline in the water table and notwithstanding that we can see that hot spot (for want of a better terminology) move to the west, which we would also expect, there is a general expectation that we will see a natural decline in that particular part of the South-East in the amount of area planted to these deep-rooted perennial forests. I would argue that the perceived problem is looking after itself reasonably well. I think that with this piece of legislation we are jumping to a conclusion—notwithstanding that the debate has been going on for a long time—very early, earlier than is necessary.

I also make the point that the government still does not know how it is going to react. I make that statement. I think the government does know but it is unwilling to tell the parliament how it is going to react, because the piece of legislation we have before us gives the government at least two options. It gives the government the option to impose a water licensing regime on plantation forests and it gives the government the option of putting a permitting system on forests, and I want to talk about that in a little while.

One of the problems I have with this bill is that the government has come to the parliament asking us to give it a range of powers when it is not prepared to tell us how it is going to use those powers or why it wants those powers. Indeed, it is asking us to give it powers to allow for at least two significantly different options. I believe that the government wants to take the option of imposing water licences. I believe that simply because the government already has the powers, although they can be improved, to go down the permitting route, if it so desired. In fact, that is the world we live in at the moment. That is another reason why I think we need to have a much, much closer look at this piece of legislation.

I put on the record my thoughts as to the lack of urgency in this particular matter because I think the declines that we have seen in the drought are no longer with us. Surely a drought will return, but the frequency of droughts in the South-East, from the records that we have so far, over the last 150-odd years, is quite low. I think we have plenty of time.

I want to come back to a couple of other matters which are relevant to this whole debate. I talked earlier about converting water licences from being area-based to volumetric. When we first imposed the water licensing regime in the South-East and allocated water to landowners to irrigate, we used what was called an area-based allocation system. A farmer might want to irrigate 20 or 40 acres—maybe I should be talking in hectares—so we allocated an amount of water to allow the farmer to water that particular area in what we call irrigation equivalents. I think it was based on the amount of water it would take to water that area of lucerne, not that much of it is used to grow lucerne, but it is pretty equivalent to growing a pasture.

By and large, when we made that allocation, the agency, at least at that point, had an understanding of what it believed was the permissible annual volume; that is, the amount of water that was available to be allocated. Every time it allocated a hectare area equivalent of water licence, it took about four megalitres of water out of the available pool. When none was left, the agency stopped allocating water in that management area. In some places it is a little bit more, but about four megalitres of water per hectare is the equivalent, in the old money, of 16 inches of rainfall. I think that is right. It is the equivalent of 400 millimetres of rainfall; 16 inches, by my calculations, which is a fair bit of water.

I certainly support the move to volumetric allocations. If you want to regulate a resource, you have to be able to manage it, and you cannot manage it if you cannot measure it. You need meters and you need to have the licensing system set up in a volumetric way. I fully support that and always have but, when we went through this process, I would have thought it would be quite simple to say to every landholder, 'For every irrigation equivalent that you have, you will get four megalitres of water as a volumetric licence.'

But no, that was far too simple. The brains trust said, 'No. We will need more water in some areas, maybe less in other areas, depending on the crop.' We went through a whole convoluted process. This started probably six or seven years ago and we still have not come to a conclusion, although I think most of the work behind that has been concluded.

Going through that process and changing the numbers, we found that, in a number of these management areas—and they are basically set on hundreds, but that is not the only way that management areas are defined or delineated—all of a sudden we became overallocated. I talked about the hundred of Grey being overallocated on day one because I think there were some landowners there gilding the lily and getting away with it.

I have talked about the border groundwater sharing agreement but, importantly, as part of the legislation, we have to abide by certain rules in that area, in that 20-kilometre zone on either side of the border. One of the rules says that we cannot be overallocated and, if we are overallocated, almost immediately we have to move to bring it back into a sustainable allocation within the limits.

This is where we have created a dilemma for ourselves with some of those border zones, in that it is my understanding that when you convert the area-based water licences to volumetric, using a multiplier that is substantially higher in some cases than what was used when the original allocations were made, then surprise, surprise: you come to a point where you have an allocation that is above what you have already predetermined as the permissible annual volume, or the sustainable yield.

In those hundreds in particular, the day we moved to introduce volumetric-based water licences we created this problem where we have to bring the allocations back such that we are not overallocated in those management areas. That is why we have not had this water allocation plan delivered and signed off on for five years, because we have not been able to come to an understanding of how to overcome that particular problem; and that is why today we are debating this bill, to give the minister the power to change the way that forestry is regarded.

I believe the minister will take the licensing option; the minister will give a water licence to all the forestry operators and the next day he will say to them, 'By the way, we are overallocated. You are growing more forest than you have licences for.' The minister will be very kind to them though; he will say, 'I'm not going to make you cut down some of your forest; I will wait until it matures and you harvest it, and then I might put some restrictions on you about how much you can replant.'

That is what this piece of legislation is about; it is about bringing back into balance the allocation in those border management areas where they would automatically become overallocated. Today they are not, because it is an area-based water licensing system, and the irrigators have so many acres and no-one really knows how many megalitres they use. As soon as we give them a licence based on megalitres, they will become overallocated and the minister will be obliged to do something about it. Those vested interests that I talked about earlier in my contribution are absolutely adamant that some of that pain should be borne by the forestry industry.

Another historical fact is that when we first prescribed the region, and first allocated water in the region, the forestry industry was ignored. The forestry industry had no input into how we allocated that water, had no input into where we would set permissible annual volume, or how much we would allocate for every hectare and therefore how many hectares in any particular management area we would issue licence allocations for. It was at arm's length to that because, to its detriment, the forestry industry—and I tried to warn them of this way back all those years ago—stayed out of the debate and said, 'Look, it's got nothing to do with us. We are growing what is called a dryland crop; we're just relying on the rain that falls from the sky.'

However, these vested interests that I talk about have come to the position where they have said, 'We don't want to take a 20 or 30 per cent cut to our water licence when we convert to volumetrics. We don't want to curtail our irrigation activity.' They have discovered that one way they can minimise the cut to their licence is to put some of the responsibility for the cut on the forestry industry.

Principally, the forests we are talking about are in the 20-kilometre border groundwater sharing zone. They are within that 20-kilometre zone near the border; and those forests have been there for a long, long, long time. I stand to be corrected on this, but I suggest that the vast majority of those forests were planted as replacement for native forests. So at the time they were planted the native scrub, the native forest, was clear-felled and replaced with plantation forest, with pinus radiata.

I would argue that not a lot of those forests have replaced pastures. Certainly, east of Penola in the northern part of the area there may be some areas where afforestation did replace pastures. However, when you get south of Penola—certainly, south of Nangwarry, or Nangwarry and south along the border zone—there would be very little pinus radiata in South Australia that was not planted many, many years ago, well before irrigation activity became popular and decades before there were any issues about overallocation. The vast majority of it was planted to replace native vegetation.

I think the science basically says that native vegetation, by and large, is deep-rooted, perennial plants, which does not have a dissimilar impact on the water balance to plantation forestry. I know there is some evidence to suggest that there is a difference, but it is at the margins.

This is what the argument is about: whether we retrospectively say to these forest owners, 'You have to wear some of the cost of overallocation,' notwithstanding that they had anything to do with the overallocation. By and large, the overallocation has occurred within the last 15 years—some of it might go back a bit further than that, but the vast majority. There are farmers in those areas who have been building centre-pivot irrigators—certainly within the last 10 years in the areas to the east of Mount Gambier (between Mount Gambier and Tarpeena/Nangwarry)—in that last period since water prescription where they did not irrigate previously, and the forests have been there for probably 50 years plus, in some cases maybe 100 years.

This is really a grab, in my opinion, by those vested interests to ensure that the forestry sector wears some of the pain. To be quite honest, I do not think it is fair. I do not think it is fair for a number of reasons, not the least being that the forestry industry never had the opportunity to be involved in the debate and the discussions when the original rules were made; that is, the impact would be retrospective on the forestry industry whereas it would not be retrospective on those irrigators who have come along much more recently.

This is one of the real problems. Being honest with ourselves and converting to volumetric is creating this problem. It is also the fact that farmers who are irrigating pastures or horticultural crops believe that they can shift some of the pain to a different sector.

There has been a plethora of studies into this issue in the South-East. I have a few documents here, and on my bookshelf there would be many feet occupied by reports and studies done into this issue in the South-East and very little of it is conclusive. However, there is one report which I think has been used in recent times to guide the government in coming to this position—the South-East Water Science Review. I have the executive summary in my hand but I also have a copy of the full document with me. I want to refer to some parts of this full document to highlight some of the points that I have been making.

A statement made to me at a briefing I had last week on this bill was that forests account for (I cannot remember the number; I do not think it matters) a substantial percentage of the total water used in the South-East. That was the statement that was made to me.

The reality is the vast majority of the water that is used in the South-East is used to grow grass, because that is what covers most of the landscape. The water we are talking about that recharges the aquifer is quite a small proportion of the total water balance. However, if we talk about all of the forest use impacting on that, all of a sudden it becomes a large figure and it makes the argument much better for those who are proffering that argument.

The document that I just referred to was the South-East Water Science Review, which is the review of a lot of the scientific papers that have been written over a significant number of years now. One of them is a paper from Benyon et al. in 2007. I think the relevant point is this, 'In most environments, evapotranspiration and rainfall are comparable in size in the hydrological cycle'—that is, there is some sort of equilibrium between the amount of rainfall and the amount of evapotranspiration—'whilst stream flow and groundwater recharge are relatively small components of the overall water balance.' It is no different in the South-East.

Most of the rainfall that falls is consumed by the plants growing naturally on the ground or cultivated on the ground and is evaporated off. That which turns into stream flow or goes into the watertable is a very small component of the overall water balance. I think we have to be cognisant of that, because that to my mind puts the lie to a claim that forests are responsible for such a huge amount of the water in the South-East. What we are talking about is the impact that forests have on the recharge, which is only a small part of the total water in the South-East.

I will read from the same document findings from the Smerdon 2009 review, as follows:

The assumptions that recharge values are static leads the modeller to a secondary uncertainty, as the long sequences of high rainfall in the 1960s and 1970s does not correspond well to the long sequence of dry now being experienced. Whilst mean annual recharge rates are used in long-term economic and resource planning, it is apparent that these rates of recharge reflect the climate of the most recent decade.

In 2009, Smerdon stated:

Therefore, relying on recharge rates calculated from conditions of the 1960s and 1970s could be misleading for an assessment of the current climatic regime and resource condition.

The point I was making is that we have had in recent times a relatively dry period and we saw that decline in the watertables. Of course, triggers were set off and panic set in. As I have been arguing, that was coupled with a huge expansion in hardwood plantation in that relatively small area west of Penola, which allowed a group of people, in my opinion, to take that on board and use that as an excuse to make significant changes to the whole management regime, leading to where we are now.

I will quote from the chapter on wetlands and ecology in the same document. It talks about the drainage in the South-East and states:

The drainage has contributed to a major landscape change in the South-East, removing over 93 per cent of the original wetland extent, according to Harding 2006. The construction of regional drainage infrastructure has also altered the movement of surface water and has modified the interaction between the surface water and the groundwater of the region.

This is one of the important factors that I think has been totally ignored in this piece of legislation. The amount of water that flows out of our drains in the South-East is quite enormous. I looked at some figures earlier today and the amount can only be described as enormous. I do not think anybody is suggesting that we stop that water flowing out of the landscape, but I do know that the amount of water that has been flowing out of our drains in the last 20 years is much less than what was flowing out of it in the 1960s and 1970s, as referred to in the wetter years.

One of the things I think we should be looking at in the South-East is managing the water flows in our drainage system. It would more than compensate for the deficiencies we have in our allocation system at the moment. But it is not being looked at. In this exercise we are taking a very blunt instrument and ignoring the difference that the drainage systems make. I also want to make the point that it is my belief—having lived in the region all of my life, farmed in the region nearly all of my life, living next door to drains and in the shade of pine trees, I have observed a great deal of the interactions, particularly the experiences that I have observed after the Ash Wednesday bushfires when all of those pine trees in the immediate vicinity of where I lived were destroyed, and stopped using water out of the landscape.

It is quite apparent to me, as all the studies show, that deep-rooted perennial plants use more water. In the landscape in the immediate vicinity and across my farm, the watertable rose dramatically a few years after the death of all those pine trees and then I saw it gradually recede during the period when they were replanted and starting to grow. There are no arguments about the fact that these trees alter the water balance but whether that it is significant or not, that is the argument. During that period when they were not taking water out of the landscape, my farm (and I have said this many times) virtually turned into a duck pond. A lot of it became almost un-farmable because it was so wet.

The other point I want to lead to is the impact of drains. I have a drainage board drain, a drain which was dug under the drainage system running within 200 metres of my home right through the middle of my farm, and out and into a bigger drain, and then into a bigger drain, and eventually the water ends up in the sea. When I was a boy in the sixties and seventies, the drains used to flood and the landscape was still quite wet and it was rare to see the major drains empty of water.

In the last 20 years, it is rare to see the drains full of water. Not only have we had dry seasons—which I think is part of the issue here—but those dry seasons, and the years before, after we had finished the drainage system and completed the drainage network, have dried out the soil profile probably up to a metre, and a couple of metres in places. I think we have denuded the landscape of billions and billions of litres of water so when we get rainfall, we have to wet all of that up before we get penetration into the groundwater system. So, not only have the drains removed the surface water and denied it the opportunity of percolating through the soil into the groundwater system, but they have also dried out the surface layers, and that means we need a lot more rainfall before that process of replenishment of the groundwater system even begins.

Again, the water allocation planning process, particularly this piece of legislation, ignores all of that. It totally ignores all of that and would have us as a parliament give the minister the power to heavily impose upon the forestry industry for no good reason. I say that because I believe at least one of the answers to the perceived problems that we have in the South-East is managing the water flows in our drainage system—something that has not been done at this stage, and it should be done, and it should have been done many years ago, and hopefully we will get to that position fairly soon.

I go back to the document that I was quoting from earlier, the South-East Water Science Review, and move onto the Specific Effects of Forestry on the Water Balance of the South-East. That is the chapter I am talking on. I want to quote from chapter 1.5.9 (Zhang and others, 2007), which states:

Other major papers (including the Zhang et al 2007 paper) confirm that plantation forestry is an increasingly important land use in Australia where industry and state and Australian governments have all committed to establish new plantations across large areas of the land currently used for agriculture. The Plantations 2020 Vision, launched by the Australian government in 1997, has a strategy to enhance regional wealth creation and international competitiveness through a sustainable increase in Australia's plantation resources based on a notional target of trebling the area of commercial tree crops by 2020. There are sound environmental and economic arguments in support of plantation development, but in this report the potential hydrological consequences are outlined and should be recognised and understood when planning such ventures.

I quoted that because, again, the process that we have been through over all these years of debate in the South-East has ignored all that. We have failed to recognise the importance of the forestry sector not just to the local economy, not just to jobs, not just to the livelihoods of the people who live in the South-East, but for all those other benefits. I talked about the fact earlier that we have over $2 billion a year deficit in forest product in this nation as opposed to the fact that we struggle to sell a lot of our horticultural and agricultural product which is grown by irrigation; and I repeat the words that I said earlier: it is a no-brainer.

That is even before we start talking about carbon sequestration, which, I believe, in the not too distant future will become quite an important factor, and we are failing to understand that. Further in the same document I quote recommendations from another report, Polglaze and Benyon 2009. Recommendation four states:

...investigate and apply methods to assess the net benefits and impacts of plantations on economic, environmental and social values.

It goes on to say:

...social, economic and other environmental impacts of plantations in catchments should be accounted for when developing. These impacts should be quantifiable and presentable in terms of benefit cost analysis, although the externalities that have no market value should also be considered, including biodiversity enhancement. Other land uses and their net impacts should also be considered for comparison. Such a balance sheet would help place plantations into a whole-of-catchment context and ascribe an overall value for land use per unit volume of water used.

I have yet to see a document produced by the government of South Australia which does any of that. I have yet to see an agency of this government, or any government in South Australia, do a proper study of the environmental, social and economic value of our forestry sector, and, again, this is one of the failures. We are being driven to give the minister powers here to impose greatly upon the forestry sector without having done the work.

There have been volumes and volumes of work done to try to define the impacts that the plantation forests in the South-East have on water recharge to the watertable. One might be excused for believing that there was an agenda, because every piece of work that has been commissioned by government is about that issue. There has been no work commissioned by government that I am aware of, and I will stand to be corrected. If it is out there, it has not been publicised very well because I try to keep an eye on these things.

I do not believe that work has been done by this government to actually appraise us of the importance of the forestry sector, particularly in comparisons between converting land use from broadacre pastoral use—the grazing of animals—to afforestation. We had the 2020 vision of the Australian government back in 1997 which said that we should be trebling the amount of forest estate in this country. I think that was a great piece of foresight. That is before we even started talking about carbon sequestration. That was in recognition of the deficit that this nation suffers because we do not have large forests.

I think that also started to recognise the point I made earlier that, in certain states—and most of the other states, apart from this one—the forestry industry is going to be forced out of native forests and into plantation forests. In that aspect we were already ahead of the game here in South Australia but it seems that nobody cares that we are willing to throw that away because of a small number of vested interests—and I am talking about a small number.

The industries which are seeking to be protected and seeking to shift some of the costs of any reduction in water allocation to the forestry sector are relatively small. Even in the context of the South-East they are relatively small. Individually, they pale into insignificance when you put them beside the forestry industry, yet we seem for a long time to have ignored the forestry sector and sought to benefit these other sectors.

I have another interesting quote, and I only came across this in the last day or so and have not done any research to get a greater understanding of it. One of the conclusions in the same document says:

There needs to be a more thorough examination of the evaporation and evapotranspiration processes across the South-East. In particular, a review of existing pan evaporation data and feedback to the Bureau of Meteorology on the associated anomalies needs to be undertaken. The high quality data station for evaporation shows a decline in evaporation over the period of record—

and suggests that this is a curiosity. As I said, I have not done any research into that but I was a bit disturbed when I read that. It suggests to me that there has been a decline in evaporation across the South-East region.

That suggests to me that we have less evaporation in those drier months of the year; it suggests to me that we have significantly fewer perennial plants growing in the landscape than we had previously. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how else or why evaporation would reduce in the region. That is something that I certainly need to apprise myself of better and I apologise to the house for not having done that, but I think it is something that is worth bringing to the attention of the house. There is strong evidence that in the wheat belt of Western Australia declining rainfalls have been associated with land clearing, and I would hate to think that we would fall into the same trap here in South Australia by wanting to change the landscape and unwittingly change the weather patterns in the region.

The last remark I want to make from this document, again, I think is in the conclusions. This is the comment I want to read:

It is essential that the South Australian government ensures that a policy framework for water resources of forests does not become a de facto set of rules.

I like that comment, because I think that is the dangerous place that we are heading. I think we have been led somewhat to defining a set of rules. I said earlier that I am afraid there are people who have been driving this agenda because they want to be able to establish a bona fide position to argue a case elsewhere and it is nothing to do with the South-East.

I have had that opinion for a long time now and I have yet to see evidence to dissuade me from that opinion. I do think, unfortunately, that a fair bit of that is behind this piece of legislation. I do think that there is an agenda within government. I do not blame the minister for this because he is probably totally unaware of a lot of the background to this because it has been going on for a long time and he has not had this particular portfolio for all that long, so I do not blame him.

The Hon. P. Caica interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes; but I am quite convinced that there is another agenda and I do have problems with the input that a small group of people in the region have had.

I said at the outset that the opposition will be seeking to move this to a review of the NRM committee when it gets to the other place, so I am not going to take too much of the house's time in the committee stage, in fact I am quite happy to move directly to the third reading debate. I do not know whether all of my colleagues are of the same opinion, but I am quite happy to because I am not seeking any further information about the intricacies of the bill at this junction.

I do want to put on the record a couple of things which I think should happen. Personally, I think this piece of legislation should be thrown out. I do not think that a minister should come to the parliament and say, 'Here's the set of powers I want you to give me. I don't know what I want to do with them, but I want you to give me a range of options and then I will make up my mind.' I do not think that is the way we should be producing legislation.

Ministers should come to the parliament and say, 'This is what I want to do. I need these powers to do that. If you give me these powers this is what I intend to do.' I think that is the way we should be producing legislation. I have my suspicions that the minister and his agency have already made up their minds. It concerns me, if that is the case, that they have not been upfront enough to tell us, and I spoke about that earlier.

I talked about the NRM board and the water allocation plan and the fact that it has gone on and has been overdue for years, year after year after year. I think this parliament should send a very strong message, not just to this NRM board but to the NRM boards across the state, that we are not going to be dictated to by them, that they are charged under the existing legislation to carry out a function and that is what they should be doing.

It is an affront to this parliament that this NRM board—and I will not go over all of the discussion about who might be to blame for this—is five years late in delivering a water allocation plan because the water allocation plan that it is trying to get through is outside the current law. I think it would be a great pity, just on that ground, if this parliament acceded to that NRM board's wishes, if for no other reason than I do not think that is the way it should be working.

We should say to the NRM board, 'Produce your water allocation plan as per the law as it stands now and as it has stood for the last 10 years and as you have been charged to operate under and also introduce the volumetric conversion and do it now. Do it now under the current law as you were charged with doing and stop trying to ask the parliament to give the minister powers to enable him to retrospectively put this additional burden onto the forestry industry.' I think those two things should happen before we even consider passing this bill; that is, introduce volumetric conversion through the introduction of a legal water allocation plan.

I think that one of the things the water allocation plan for the South-East should have done years ago was express water allocations as a percentage of the permissible annual volume or of the sustainable yield for the management area, rather than as a volume of water. That way, as conditions change, if we have a series of dry years, they are only allowed a certain percentage of it. We have seen this being activated in the Murray-Darling Basin in recent years where irrigators, notwithstanding they have a certain allocation, are only allowed a certain percentage.

It is very simply managed if every water allocation is expressed as a percentage of a cake of a certain size, in the knowledge that the size of the cake might vary on a regular basis—every two, three, five, eight, 10 years. It would overcome a significant number of the perceived problems. It would also change the mindset of irrigators in the South-East, in so much as, at the moment, I think they all have an expectation that they will get a water licence expressed as a volumetric licence and they have a God-given right to that volume of water, come what may.

This is one of the problems that we encountered during the recent drought in this state on the River Murray—not that they had an expectation which they should not have had and which they should not have enjoyed, but through that expectation that we had very secure water in South Australia in the River Murray, the vast majority of our irrigation water in the River Murray was being used for permanent plantings. When we were forced to reduced allocations, that put a huge stress on the irrigation sectors in the South Australian part of the system.

Something like 85 per cent of the irrigation water in the River Murray was used for permanent plantings. It gave us very little flexibility when we were only allowing irrigators to use 20, 30 and 18 per cent of their allocation. They were forced to the wall. They were forced to go and buy temporary water. They were forced to allow their crops to die.

The Hon. P. Caica: We helped them too.

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes, I know. I am just making the point that, if we allow the mindset to develop that this volume of water that we are going to give in the volumetric conversion is a God-given right and should never vary, we will found ourselves facing the same problem sometime in the future.

I know I have taken a fair bit of the house's time. As I started off, this is a subject which I am passionate about. It is a subject which brought me to be a member of this place in the first instance. I have witnessed some very silly things being done in the South-East over water allocation and I witness some very silly things continuing to be done.

I think it would be a very silly thing for us to pass this piece of legislation, giving the minister a variety of options, without forcing the minister to say to us exactly what he wants to do. That in itself is enough reason for the parliament to say, 'Sorry, minister. Go back and complete your work and come back with exactly what powers you want by expressing to us what you want to do with those powers.'

I will conclude my remarks and repeat that the opposition will be seeking to have this matter referred to the Natural Resources Committee of the parliament in the other place. Hopefully, that committee will get to the bottom of some of the matters that I have raised here today, and particularly take on board the serious concerns of the forestry sector in this state and, hopefully, get some sort of understanding of some of the agendas that are happening in the background. I will conclude my remarks there.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (16:44): I too rise to speak to the Natural Resources Management (Commercial Forests) Amendment Bill 2010. In my opening remarks, I would like to say that water, in whatever form, brings a lot of passion to a debate. I certainly appreciate the passionate debate from the deputy leader, the member for MacKillop, and his knowledge of water and the reasoning that it got him into this place. Certainly, he lives in the region where this bill, if passed, will have the most effect on forestry.

According to the minister, the policy framework stipulates that the use of water by commercial plantations should be managed by applying either a forest permit system or a water licensing system through the Natural Resources Management Act. The bill seeks to expand the current forest water permit system and also introduce the forest water licensing and trading system, introduce water allocation plans relevant to forestry activity, and define the allocation of water relevant to forestry activity.

This policy has come forward under several environment ministers during the Rann government, and, from an off-line conversation with the current minister, I think it has probably been about five years in the making. Minister Hill gave assurances to the forestry sector in a ministerial statement on the topic of managing the expansion of forestry's use of the South-East's water resources. The expansion has not materialised, and industry therefore believes that proposals to license continue to be unnecessary. I quote:

Provision has been made for approximately 59,000 hectares of total expansion to be permitted before any need to secure water allocations to offset the impact of further forest expansion. The provision allows for an increase in the current estate of 135,000 hectares by approximately 45 per cent. By its own assessment, this provides the forest industry with significant certainty regarding its opportunities to expand for approximately 10 to 15 years.

On 18 June 2009 minister Weatherill introduced amendments to the NRM act that would license forestry as a water user, and on this side of the house we agreed that the bill should be referred to the parliament's Natural Resources Committee. On 1 December 2009 minister Weatherill moved that the bill be discharged after he agreed with our position to refer the bill. The minister formally asked the Natural Resources Committee to inquire into it, but this was subsequently withdrawn and its investigation never took place.

In early 2010 minister Caica, the present minister, set up an interagency reference group which was established to work on the Lower Limestone Coast Water Allocation Plan, which included PIRSA, the Department of Treasury and Finance, the Department for Water, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the South-East Natural Resources Management Board. The group also established a reference group to consult with key stakeholders. The forestry industry states that both the bill and the water allocation plan were not provided to the reference group beforehand.

This bill was introduced into the House of Assembly on 24 November 2010 and is largely the same as the 2009 bill, although I note there are several amendments. The bill is an expression of a statewide policy framework, 'Managing the water resource impacts of plantation forests', which was adopted by the government in 2009. The licensing system operates within a water allocation plan and it is intended to integrate with the current system of licensing water, thereby facilitating trade between licensed water users and the forestry industry.

The government's 'carrots', so to speak, in favour of the bill are to streamline the current forest permit system, taking it from the Development Act 1993 to the NRM act and, so it says, increase benefits to licence holders as they will be able to trade their licences. However, at issue is that South Australia, if this bill were enacted, would regulate the commercial forestry sector through water licensing. Obviously there are concerns with being the 'first mover', such as investors moving interests interstate because they will not have to confront the same regulations.

I want to make the point that, if this bill were introduced as the River Murray Act, which was introduced in several other states at the same time and which is a national act, perhaps there may have been more consensus on this side of the house. However, being the first mover may deter investors from investing in the forestry plantation in this state.

We also need to be aware, as people in the forestry industry are, of the plantations in Victoria that are ForestrySA plantations, so we would actually have two different rules and regulations for forestry under the government's ownership. That will add another level of bureaucracy if this bill is enacted.

Forestry industry players such as the National Association of Forest Industries, the Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council, Australian Forest Growers and Gunns Timber oppose the bill. They support the referral to the Natural Resources Committee as an opportunity to put their point of view and to expose flaws in the Department for Water advice.

As well as having not been properly consulted, their concerns include: it is inconsistent with minister Hill's 2004 statement; there are no exemptions in the bill for small-scale farm forestry; it ignores the positive benefits of forestry on salinity and water quality; and it is inequitable to regulate forests when not including similar land uses which are also water-affecting activities (for example, lucerne).

I note the deputy leader's comments about other perceived water-affecting users such as lucerne. It could involve even dryland pasture plants, whether it is phalaris or some other grasses that are involved here. I am certainly well aware of irrigators in the South-East who feel that, if forestry is regulated under the water allocation plan, perhaps they will not take the potential hit in their change of water allocation from a hectare to a measurement basis (i.e. hectare to volumetric). They perceive that if they can have forestry in the game, so to speak, they will not get such a hit.

As the deputy leader rightly mentioned, forestry is not in the mix as we speak. The government has spent five years developing a water allocation plan for the South-East, and these things are supposed to be on five-year cycles. It seems to be a continuum of work for the bureaucrats to get through this process and you are already running into the next stage of water allocation planning in this state.

In relation to general sustainable water use by forestry activity, the National Association of Forestry Industries makes reference to the CSIRO's technical comments on the guide to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's proposed basin plan as supporting its views. NAFI believes the CSIRO's submission highlights:

1. That to remove intercepting activities may be impractical and/or undesirable due to the negative consequences resulting from catchment clearing (e.g. erosion and salinity) and the artificial inflation of the water budget. For instance, forestry provides a range of ecosystem services essential to the maintenance of catchment integrity.

2. Current interception 'does not produce a conflict between current diversions and the environment because it is implicitly included in the water availability calculations of the current plans, and it is using water in the landscape that was there under natural conditions anyway. It is only future interception in a fully-allocated region that is of concern. The National Water Initiative is precise about this.' Importantly, they disagree that the Lower Limestone Coast Water Allocation Planning area is overallocated. In any case, there are no plans to increase plantation areas.

3. That it is more sensible to fully accept interception as a fixed use, much as basic rights uses are accepted, and to consider diversions not interception when balancing uses with environmental need. Should further regulation of all water uses become necessary if a catchment becomes fully—or over—allocated 'all new interceptions should be within SDLs and included in water plans, consistent with the NWI'. The NWI is quite specific on the need for no retrospectivity.

As I indicated before, the South Australian Farmers Federation, the Coonawarra vignerons (who I met with recently), the South Australian dairy farmers and the local potato growers support forests being included in the natural resources management regime. They are very keen to have it included in the draft South-East Natural Resources Management Board Water Allocation Plan. Essentially, some of these players assume that forestry will be included.

As Mitch said, people are making assumptions about legislation that has not been enacted, if it will ever be enacted. We will certainly seek to have this recommended to the Natural Resources Committee, but I also have concerns with the proposed forward sale. In addition to having those concerns about the proposed forward sale of three rotations of forestry, or 111 years of the future of the South-East, who will own the water? It is understood that it is about $300 million worth of water we are talking about here. Will it be the government that will basically own the stumps of the trees or the forest plantation—

Mr Whetstone: They will keep the credits.

Mr PEDERICK: Yes, that's it. They will probably keep any carbon credits—or will it be an investor? The most likely investor for a purchase of the forward sale of forestry—and I hope this fool idea just goes away, that the government suddenly realises the folly of destroying a region—would be someone like a Chinese investment group or perhaps an American superannuation fund. Although, the way their economy is going, I am not sure who is going to have the money in America.

Mr Whetstone: Malaysia.

Mr PEDERICK: As the member for Chaffey indicated, it could be other money from South-East Asia, from Malaysia. People have certainly been placing a high interest in the forestry estate. We have seen the recent sale of Gunns down there at a heavily discounted rate of about 40 or 50 per cent below valuation. One of the concerns I have is in part 5A—Commercial forestry, division 1—Preliminary, 169A—Interpretation. In this part, what concerns me is who is going to have control of the water. I think it gives the minister a fair bit of flexibility. This part provides:

(1) In this part—

forest manager, in relation to a commercial forest, means the person who has effective control of the forest vegetation that makes up the forest, either as the owner or occupier of the land on which the vegetation is growing or as owner of the forest vegetation under a forest property (vegetation) agreement under the Forest Property Act 2000.

I think that gives the minister an each way bet, and he may be able to explain that when we get to the committee stage of the bill. I am not a lawyer, but my interpretation of that subsection is that the minister could deem that either the government will be in charge of the water or the new owner of the forest, if the proposed sale of rotations goes ahead. I think we need to be perfectly clear in this place on who is likely to own any water licence under this bill, because I think it has real ramifications for whoever takes on the venture, and certainly for future governments. If this does go ahead for 111 years, that is a lot of future governments whichever way you look at it in this place.

As I indicated before, it would be much more sensible if we saw all states involved in this as one, so that one state was not playing the lead role and putting an imposition in place for the forestry industry, with the others sitting back—which essentially they are—to see what happens as far as investment in our state goes.

The member for MacKillop, the deputy leader, talked about the drainage system in the South-East, and there is comment that only 6 per cent of the natural wetlands are left in the South-East, but land was cleared over the last 120 to 150 years or longer for agricultural purposes. In the past 50 or 60 years I note the work of the McCourt family at Woakwine Cutting where the McCourts and workmen cut through with a—I am not sure, was it a D6 or a D7?

Mr Pegler: D6.

Mr PEDERICK: D6—thank you, member for Mount Gambier—with a scoop on the back. To be frank, it was a hell of an engineering job, operating this equipment 24 hours a day to help drain thousands of acres near Beachport.

These drains, thousands of kilometres of them in the South-East, have drained the surface water so that it could open up agricultural opportunity and it has been a boon for the South-East. I have seen the impact of the dry years as the member for MacKillop was indicating. I used to shear sheep at a property at Callendale near Lucindale, but you would not shear any sheep there now, sadly; she is covered in blue gums. I visited the old shed the other day and I was very disappointed to see roofing iron missing and the board looking like it was going to rot away. Such is life I guess. The property is covered wall to wall, and if it was not blue gum—it was very close to it—it was pine plantations.

The point I am trying to make is that we seem to almost be at odds. In one sense the land has been drained so that agriculture can operate; yet now we have people involved in the agriculture sector and the government wanting to bring in forestry, which has been in action down there, certainly with softwoods—pine—for at least 120 years. I have heard all the arguments from both sides about how much water forestry uses and some sectors say it is not just rainfall-intercepting activity, it does draw the watertable down, and to a certain extent it does, but there are always recoveries in a place like the South-East. As I said, they have suffered their dry years and have not had some of the recovery that they could have, but they have had a wetter period and there is a lot of water that flows out to sea and flows away in the drains.

I think it would be pertinent to have this legislation referred to the Natural Resources Committee. It has been five years. What is another little while to make sure we get it right not only now for the state of South Australia but for future generations? It concerns me that alongside this legislation, we have the proposed forward sale of forestry which, I believe, will tear our community apart.

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (17:04): I rise to speak on this bill, and I want to commend, first, the member for MacKillop, because the very fact that he is in this house is because of this very issue. I also note that the member for Mount Gambier will have a fair bit to say on this matter as well. Can I say that the member for MacKillop has had many a battle on this issue, and I pay huge credit to him because many of us did not understand this issue, particularly when there is a huge change of principle like licensing the water for trees, because you wonder where such a principle is going to finish.

He had many a battle in our party room with another friend of mine—former minister Brindal. There was many a battle (which I will long remember) in our party that went on about this particular issue. Can I say that this issue has been well aired within our party room and opinions are well founded. I do not always agree with the member for MacKillop, but on this one I do, because he has convinced me by his personal commitment and the fact that he even got here in the first place.

This was one of the issues. Particularly water licences generally in the South-East was a very difficult issue back then, and to knock off a good Liberal member—in fact, a previous Liberal leader—was no mean feat, and this issue was prominent with respect to that. I stand here and support the shadow minister in relation to this issue.

This bill seeks to expand the current forest waters permit system and also introduce a forest water licensing training system. It seeks to introduce water allocation plans relevant to forestry activity and define the allocation of water relevant to the forest industry. As I said, this has been quite a controversial change of basic principle, and credit, as I said, to the member for MacKillop. This policy has been operating under several environment ministers during the Rann Labor government.

I just question: if you keep taking it to the nth degree where this principle finishes, because what about lucerne pastures? We know that these have deep taproots. They take a lot of water out of the aquifer. So, really, should lucerne pastures, particularly some variety of lucerne (lucerne trees, even) be exempt from this? Anyway, if we keep going, should cereal croppers be required to have a water licence, because we do also pull water, particularly when you are growing faba beans.

We do grow faba beans on our property. They have a huge, long taproot, which pierces the watertable. It pierces the hard surface underneath, the soil pan that was put there by bad farming for many years. Of course, faba beans reach right down and also get into the watertable. If this principle is applied here, where does it go? These are the debates that we have had in our party room for many, many years.

Minister Hill gave assurances to the forestry sector in a ministerial statement on the topic of managing the expansion of forestry's use of the South-East's water resources. The expansion has not materialised and therefore the industry believes that proposals to licence continue to be unnecessary, as the shadow minister has just said, and I would agree with him.

Minister Weatherill on 18 June 2009 introduced amendments to the NRM act which would license forestry as a water user. Then, of course, minister Caica, a good friend of mine—

The Hon. P. Caica interjecting:

Mr VENNING: And it is not an easy issue, because you inherited this. I am interested to hear from the member for Mount Gambier. Have you spoken yet?

Mr Pederick: He is not speaking.

Mr VENNING: So, he is not going to speak. Anyway, I am interested to know what your position is, because I can remember discussions with your predecessor on this matter, Mr McEwen. There was certainly some heat in the discussion, because no-one exactly agrees with the principle. But, it is a difficult issue. Under minister Caica in early 2010 an interagency reference group was established to work on the Lower Limestone Coast WAP, including PIRSA, DTF, DfW, DENR and, of course, the South-East Natural Resources Management Board.

The group also established a reference group to consult with key stakeholders. The forestry industry states that both the bill and the WAP were not provided to the reference group beforehand. You would question that.

The bill then was introduced to the House of Assembly on 24 November 2010 and is largely the same as the 2009 bill. I can understand that the member for Mount Gambier will probably go along this line, but all the plantations have now been planted and they do use water—they do. I can understand that, but I would be interested to hear what his point of view will be. This is an issue that is uniquely South-East.

Previously, there was plenty of water down there. Of course, I have a bit of history with it because my uncle, who is still alive, was one of the first guys who went down there in the early 1950s working for the water works (E&WS) and he did the planning for all the original drains, particularly those just north of Millicent. He lived in Millicent for many years and he was the surveyor in charge of drains. His name is Evan Tylor, and he still lives there and still talks about these drains.

They were marvellous things but now, of course, they can be a little bit controversial. They made all this land that was basically unproductive into vastly productive land. In fact, we used to call the South-East the breadbasket of South Australia because it became hugely productive land with the pastures and the adding of fertiliser. Certainly, it has been a credit to the South-East people.

I want to finally say in relation to the forests, and as an allied issue, that I cannot believe that the government would sell off the asset, that is, the forests in the South-East. This is yet another example of government not caring about a rural community, particularly when the local economy is so dependent on these forests for future income. You really are selling off a birthright. I am a horse trader, and always have been, and the people who buy these will be buying an absolute bargain and will harvest them over the years and make a fortune out of them and play the market. I believe that market should remain with the government, the local saw mills and the local communities down there. It is an asset that will reach far into the future for many years and, if they are sold now, it is an asset gone forever, and it really will gut those rural communities.

I think the government is showing a certain arrogance towards regional South Australia. Again, it is all about the government paying the bills of today and stuff tomorrow. I would use the phrase 'bugger tomorrow' but that is not parliamentary—but I have said it anyway. It goes onto a long list of negatives for country South Australia by this Rann Labor government. Whether or not it is intentional, that is what is going to happen. It is an easy pick for them. They sell of an asset because there are no votes for them down there and they do not really care. What about the general community? This will affect all South Australians in the long-term but, certainly, the people in the South-East in the short term. I believe the government has abandoned our country people.

I do not blame minister Caica for this, because he was minister for primary industry at the time. He did not sack the advisory board, but the current minister has, after 125 years. I cannot believe this. Today we had a briefing on bioagronomics and we were talking about all the technology that is coming out. That is fabulous, but we do need to have people giving independent advice because all this technology is extremely expensive. We have the best facilities for bioeconomics in the world but the money in it is commercial money. What sort of advice do you think the farmers are going to get? It is going to be commercial advice. We need the department there giving us independent advice, because it is going to be very difficult to make the decisions for the future in relation to guaranteeing food security for Australia.

If we do this right, I reckon there is a hugely optimistic future for us. It has to be managed carefully and we have got to fund it. It is not the time for SARDI, our key research body through the agronomic centre at the Waite Institute, to be stripped of further resources, and that is what has been happening. It is not right. It is the wrong message and the wrong direction. I do not want to see R&D cut even further, because that is what has been happening.

I thank you, Madam Speaker, for organising today's briefing. It was hugely interesting and I think every MP ought to get a copy of the handouts because the information was quite spellbinding. Our position in the world in relation to this subject is pretty good, and it is great to have a positive after so many negatives.

As a final comment, I want to say that we know we have EISs (environmental impact statements) on all these matters in relation to the environment: why can we not have, in relation to the sale of the forests, a CIS (which I label a community impact statement), because certainly it is going to strip the community?

Finally, I commend the member for MacKillop, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, on a long-term policy relating to this issue. He has fought hard. It has been tough, but the people of the South-East have supported him. You would remember that he came here as an Independent and it was my job to talk to him, this maverick who came in here and knocked off my leader and friend. Now here he is, deputy leader of the Liberal Party and still fighting the fight for the people of the South-East. All I can say is well done to him and I hope he is successful in making sure that the people of the South-East always have a strong voice.

I will be extremely interested to hear what the member for Mount Gambier has to say on this issue because I am not a font of all knowledge and I do not represent the area, but I certainly listen to those who live there and those who have lived there. So, with those few words I commend the member for MacKillop and I would support him in saying that if this bill never got up I would not be upset.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

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