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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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Parliamentary Committees

NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: DRAFT MURRAY-DARLING BASIN PLAN

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (11:03): I move:

That the 64th report of the committee, on Water Resources Management in the Murray-Darling Basin: Volume 3, be noted.

This is the Natural Resources Committee's third report on water resources management in the Murray–Darling Basin. This report considers and makes recommendations on the draft Murray-Darling Basin plan. This report draws on evidence from 78 witnesses and 21 written submissions, together with three fact-finding trips that the committee made to South Australian river communities, including the Riverland, Chowilla and Lake Victoria; Goolwa, the Lower Lakes and the Coorong; and Mannum and the Lower Murray swamps.

A number of expert briefings were also received and a comprehensive literature review was undertaken. This evidence and, consequently, this report encompasses a breadth of views expressed by the South Australian community. The Murray River is the lifeblood of this state with its health underpinning much of the state's history and ongoing prosperity. As well as supporting communities in the basin, the River Murray is also a critical source of water for Adelaide and communities as distant as Keith, the Upper South-East and Whyalla, Kimba and Lock on the Eyre Peninsula.

In fact, the majority of members seated in this chamber, except for perhaps the members for Finniss and Mount Gambier, will have at least part of their electorates serviced by water from the River Murray. Supplying, as it does, between 40 and 90 per cent to our state's urban water supply, I think I can safely say that the ongoing health of the River Murray is a big deal for South Australia.

South Australians have argued passionately to protect the river system in times gone by and now we must do so again. While experts like Professor Peter Cullen (sadly now deceased) have warned us for decades of the consequences of overallocation, the recent millennium drought has shown us all the graphic and devastating results that long-term overallocation and over-extraction of the basin's resources has on our natural assets and communities.

While touring South Australian river communities, members heard from a number of residents and stakeholders. Rose Faehrmann from the Riverglen Marina at Mannum said that in their town 15 tourism, retail and other businesses had disappeared during the drought and have not returned, highlighting the effect on the economy in just one of South Australia's river towns.

The South Australian Murray-Darling Basin NRM Board told the committee that a number of native fish species have not been seen since the drought and would be unlikely to survive long-term if not for the captive breeding programs. Joanna Pfeiffer from Long Flat showed members how the acidified groundwater on her dairy farm allowed prolonged drying and rewetting of the Lower Murray swamps flood plain.

Blanchetown pistachio grower, councillor David Peake, related to the committee the immense stress experienced by many individuals as a consequence of the drought and the damaged social fabric of the majority of South Australian river communities. In a number of instances, the stress and depression brought on by the drought have sadly contributed to people taking their own life. These are stories from people living and working on the river, reminding us that the consequences of not dealing with the underlying problem of overallocation and uncertainty are serious and can be catastrophic.

The Australian community needs a long-term resolution to allocation in the Murray-Darling Basin. The Goyder Institute (whose damning expert panel assessment report was unfortunately only received Monday of this week and too late to be considered in our report) back in 2011 estimated South Australian drought impacts exceeded $750 million between 2000 and 2009, while drought legacy impacts, such as a acidification, river collapse, dying river red gums and black box forests, as well and as a severely degraded south lagoon of the Coorong and elevated salinity in Lake Albert, are ongoing problems unlikely to be rectified by the new regime proposed in the draft plan.

The basin planning process provides the best opportunity yet to deal with the root cause of all these problems. However, the committee believes that in its current form the basin plan fails to meet the objectives of the commonwealth Water Act 2007 and does not meet the social, economic, cultural or environmental needs of South Australia and South Australians. Significant amendments are needed and key pieces of additional work are still required. For example, the committee is recommending that the basin plan should include:

1. salinity targets for Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert of less than 1,000 and 1,500 electrical conductivity units respectively for 95 per cent of the time measured as a 10-year rolling average;

2. the need for water height targets for below Lock 1 within the height of Lake Alexandrina to remain above 0.5 metres AHD (Australian Height Datum) for 95 per cent of the time measured as a 10-year rolling average, with water height never again allowed to fall below mean sea level, which has obviously proved devastating; and

3. it is also this committee's recommendation that prior to the finalisation of the basin plan additional hydrological modelling is needed to determine the viability of removing some of the operational constraints that we are told prevent environmental outcomes in South Australia and elsewhere in the basin.

I would like to sum up by quoting from Mr Tom Trevorrow, Ngarrindjeri Elder and Chair of the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority. Mr Trevorrow, speaking on behalf of his people, the traditional custodians of the country encompassing the Lower Lakes, Coorong and Murray Mouth, told this committee that:

In our beliefs, the lands and waters are a living body. It is a living thing and not something to be looked at and to be used solely for economic purposes. We look upon it...for survival. We need water, a right amount of water, good quality water to flow down through the river into our lakes, into our Coorong, out through the Murray-Mouth to keep our lands and waters alive and to keep all our stories and our culture and the Ngarrindjeri people alive. If we are deprived of water, then what is happening is we are being deprived of our culture and our cultural rights within our own lands and waters to pass on to our next generation of children. So, that is the way we look upon water: it is a cultural right and it should be sufficient, good quality water coming down into the lakes and out through the Mouth.

I would like to thank all those who gave their time to assist the committee in its inquiry. The response from the community and different people with interests in the Murray-Darling Basin draft plan was quite outstanding. I particularly commend the members of the committee. This is a wonderful committee and I really appreciate the effort that has been put in by everybody. I thank Mr Geoff Brock MP, Mrs Robyn Geraghty MP, Mr Lee Odenwalder MP, Mr Don Pegler MP, Mr Dan van Holst Pellekaan MP, Hon. Robert Brokenshire MLC, Hon. John Dawkins MLC and Hon. Gerry Kandelaars MLC for their contributions to this report, as well as the former members of the committee, Hon. Russell Wortley MLC and Hon. Paul Holloway MLC. All members have worked cooperatively on this report.

Finally, I thank the committee staff—Mr Patrick Dupont, Mr David Trebilcock and Dr Mark Siebentritt—for their assistance in this report. I commend this report to the house.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (11:11): I, too, stand to support the report, and I also support all the comments that have just been made by our chair, the member for Ashford. This report has been done by our parliamentary standing committee as a report to parliament, and it has certainly tried to represent all the interests of South Australia. We have done everything we possibly can to represent every corner of South Australia on this issue.

I take particular interest in this, of course, because in the electorate of Stuart are the towns of Morgan, Blanchetown, Cadell and Murbko in that important section of the river. Also, the vast majority of the Mid North area and the regional city of Port Augusta rely on the river for their water. It is an important issue for enormous parts of our state, not just the obvious sections on or near the actual Murray River. We have done this work from a South Australian perspective, and we have tried to consider all of South Australia in our work. The report includes recommendations which we believe are the very best that we can come up with for this parliament and our state to consider as a response to the Murray-Darling Basin plan draft report.

It is important to say that our committee has worked exceptionally well together. It is usually the case that we work very well together and I think there is no better example than this piece of work of how we have come together in a multipartisan way. I also thank our staff, Patrick Dupont, David Trebilcock, and also consultant Mark Siebentritt, who have been an enormous support for us. This is probably the single biggest piece of work that we have done, and everybody has pulled together exceptionally well.

We went to great effort to get out and about: we did not want this to be just desktop work. We took an enormous number of submissions, and we thank all those people who put in the time and effort to make submissions, whether they be short or extensive. The committee visited, with our staff, the Riverland, Mid Murray area and also the Lower Lakes area. We deliberately went to all those areas so that we could see, touch and feel firsthand the places, the river and, most importantly, listen to the people who live and work in those areas.

I wholeheartedly commend this report to parliament. This is the most important issue facing South Australia and regional South Australia at the moment. There are many issues, but there is nothing bigger facing our state right now than what to do in response to the Murray-Darling Basin plan draft report and how South Australia will participate in the very important negotiations leading forward—hopefully over the next several months, not the next several years—to come up with a plan of how we are, as a nation, going to deal with the Murray-Darling Basin.

Mr BROCK (Frome) (11:15): I take this opportunity also to speak on the Natural Resources Committee's report, which is before the Parliament of South Australia for discussion and to look at the Murray-Darling Basin draft plan. As the member for Stuart has already done, I also thank in advance all the members of this committee. It has been a committee that has worked very well. It is a multipartisan committee, and we get on very well. The Hon. Steph Key, our chairperson, has been a great leader and an inspiration to us, and she has guided us very well. I also thank the staff of our committee—Patrick Dupont, David Trebilcock and Dr Mark Siebentritt—for their work. The staff have worked tirelessly to complete this report and the recommendations for us. The report has been very well received by the community. As the member for Stuart said, we wanted to make certain that we did not just do a desktop audit. We went out and talked to people, and we also had submissions coming in.

One of the issues I have is that Port Pirie is reliant 100 per cent on the River Murray. So, I am very passionate about this committee, and I am very passionate about the health of the river and the Murray-Darling Basin. Before I go into discussing the issues, I want to say that I am very disappointed in terms of the local government's point of view. We asked for local government to forward recommendations. I specifically asked the councils in my region, and out of all the local government councils in South Australia, only three put in a submission to the committee, two from the Murray and one from outside, and that was the District Council of Barunga West. We need to be very clear that, if we have a concern, we need to put in a submission outlining that concern, no matter how small it may be, to ensure that when people higher up look at this to make a decision, they will see that there are concerns out there; otherwise, if they do not put in a submission, people will say, 'There were no issues; the status quo is quite okay.'

The River Murray is the lifeblood of this state, with its health underpinning much of the state's economy, history and ongoing prosperity. As well as supporting communities in the basin, as I indicated, the River Murray is also a critical source of water not only to Adelaide and the communities across the vast areas of South Australia but, in particular, the cities of the Upper Spencer Gulf, the Copper Coast and also around the Clare Valley, which has a mixture of bore water and mains water. Very clearly, we rely on the health of that river. People say to me, 'Why are you concerned about the health of the River Murray; you don't live on the Murray?'

As the member for Stuart has indicated, and as other people have said, 'We live off the River Murray. If it goes down and it does not survive, we are the ones who suffer.' In fact, the majority of the members seated in this chamber, except perhaps for the member for Finniss and the member for Mount Gambier, would have at least part of their electorate serviced by water from the river. In times gone by, South Australians argued passionately to protect the river system, and now we in this chamber, and that includes all political parties, and we as a state need to do this again. I can vividly remember, as a councillor in the Port Pirie Regional Council, attending a water conference at UniSA—

Mr Venning: As the mayor?

Mr BROCK: No. I was a councillor at the time; it was before I became the mayor. This was when my wife was alive. It is a long time ago. Member for Schubert, if you can be a bit patient, I will explain to you how it turned out.

Mr Venning: I will.

Mr BROCK: You will? Thank you. I attended this conference on water. It was on a Saturday morning. I went to North Terrace, and I sat in there. The speaker talked about the salinity of the River Murray and the viability of the river, and he talked about the reduced opportunities for selling wines to Europe and so on because of the quality assurance that would not be there in the future.

He also mentioned that there would be wars between the states and that there would be water trading happening. I looked at it, and I thought, 'This is a comical show.' I sat there for the whole conference. When I got back home, my late wife said, 'How did it go?' I said, 'It was just a comical show. It is a far-fetched thing, and it will never happen.' It is happening today. The issues are there. We are not at war, but each state does not agree. There is an issue with salinity, and the health of the river and the Murray-Darling Basin is at risk. That conference was held over 20 years ago. We should have listened, but we did not. Now is the time to get this right.

The basin planning process provides the best opportunity yet to deal with the root cause of all these problems. However, the committee believes that, in its current form, the basin plan fails to meet the objectives of the commonwealth Water Act 2007 and does not meet the social, economic, cultural or environmental needs of South Australia and South Australians. Significant amendments are needed and key pieces of additional work are still required.

Whilst the terms of reference for the Murray-Darling Basin plan were very concise, it is my belief as an individual that we need to look outside the square and bring extra water in from other under-utilised locations to better utilise our precious resource to achieve the fullest economic outcome for not only South Australia but all of Australia and, very importantly, to improve the health of the river system.

The Hon. Steph Key has put the three recommendations of the committee forward, and I agree with those. In closing, I reiterate that we need to start acting as Australians and not as individual states. This is our time. We need to get this plan right. As a country and as a state, we need to get it right. I commend the report to the house.

Mr PEGLER (Mount Gambier) (11:21): First of all, I support this report and I congratulate our Chair, the Hon. Steph Key, and the members and staff of our committee. I particularly commend all those people who put in submissions and showed us around when we had a look along the river.

As the member for Mount Gambier, I have never known a lot about the Murray River; I certainly know a lot more now. We inspected the river, from the mouth right through to Lake Victoria in New South Wales. I must say, it is a river that is very much at risk. All rivers, wherever they are, should be assessed from the mouth backwards. Unfortunately, that has not been the case with the river.

We saw elevated salinity levels in the Lower Lakes and the Coorong, and some of those areas are now hypersaline. That certainly needs to be addressed. We then saw the acid sulfate soils around Mannum, where the river was allowed to drop so low that the peat soil actually cracked open. That allowed air to get to the reed beds underneath, which caused acid sulfate to accumulate and millions of dollars worth of infrastructure have been completely ruined. All that country will have to be completely laser levelled again. The banks around those irrigation areas will have to be completely relaid again because they have been allowed to crack open. I think it is a very sad thing to have seen happen.

We also saw along the river the collapse of the banks in various areas. That was mainly because the river had been allowed to drop far too low during the drought. Of course, we saw a lot of areas where there has been a loss of both flora and fauna species. Many of the significant Indigenous sites have also been put at risk.

The Murray-Darling Basin plan, as far as I am concerned, does not go far enough to address the needs of the river in South Australia. I do not know that it is always about the amount of gigalitres; it should be about the assessments. We should have in place maximum salinity levels, minimum river levels, etc., right throughout the river so that the river can be managed properly. Unfortunately, the Murray-Darling Basin plan does not approach it that way. As far as I am concerned, to assess a river you should start from the mouth backwards. I commend the report to the house.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (11:24): I rise to speak on the 64th report of the Natural Resources Committee before the house today, 4 April, entitled Water Resources Management in the Murray-Darling Basin. I, too, would like to thank the hardworking committee for giving me and many Chaffey constituents the opportunity to make a submission to this inquiry. I also acknowledge the committee's visit to the electorate of Chaffey in October last year as part of the inquiry. I applaud the principles adopted by the committee in the undertaking of this inquiry. The first principle, in particular, recognises the need for a balanced approach to the Murray-Darling Basin water reform that delivers a balanced outcome.

Turning to the report itself, some of the questions that need to be answered involve whether the basin plan provides enough water for the environment. Perhaps it does not. I will just explain that, to date, water returned to the environment before 2009 through Living Murray, Water for Rivers and other environmental initiatives has been about 823 gigalitres. The basin plan, as it stands to date if adopted, will return some 2,750 gigalitres—and that is before the recommendation of having an assessment in 2015 of how the plan is working. But in 2019 there will be some 3,573 gigalitres of water returned to the system.

One thing we cannot forget is that we have seasonal flows. We have unregulated flows that will need to be utilised coming into the dry periods. We cannot just rely on the number. To date, the number has been divisive. Not only is the number dividing the states, the communities and the interest groups, but it is just a divisive number. We look at the plan and people are looking for that extended number, and that number is the topic of argument at the moment. However, we are asking for a number without an environmental watering plan. What are we going to do with the number? What are we going to do with the extra water that needs to be put back into the environment? How will we manage it? How are the flows going to be managed? How are the targets going to be achieved? These are the issues underlying unanswered questions, and it is very frustrating.

Are other social, cultural, environmental and economic needs for South Australian communities being addressed? No, they are not. There are no provisions for social and economic benefits in the Water Act. Sadly, the first plan did not recognise the impacts, both to production and communities. To the credit of the commonwealth government, the Tony Windsor house of reps parliamentary committee did a roadshow, much like the Natural Resources Committee has done, and talked to the people. They went out and got an understanding of exactly what was happening at the grass level, just to have a better understanding. So, when they put in their report, they had a clear understanding of the impacts and the circumstances that the system is under. More importantly, they understood just what effect the lack of a plan is having and what the social and economic impact was right the way along the river.

How are the SDLs being treated? Are they being implemented fairly? I would say that there is little recognition for that. The assessment period started in 2009. South Australia has reformed its water use and efficiency gains since 1969, after coming under a cap. That cap was put in place due to an agreement that South Australia would not build the Chowilla dam. In not building the Chowilla dam, they settled for a storage right in Dartmouth in a newly built dam. They would put their storage water into that dam and forego any storage facility here in South Australia. We look back on that through history and we ask whether that was a silly move. Some say yes and some say no. Commercial users would say that, yes, we should have had that storage. The environmentalists rightfully stated that that storage facility would have had huge environmental impact downstream.

The assessment period started in 2009. It is not a fair starting point because South Australia started their reform in 1969. All the other basin states and irrigation areas have come up looking pretty happy about having a 2009 starting period. Again, that was to South Australia's detriment. Regarding the increased diversion by 3,000 gigalitres since 1969, it is funny that the number we are looking to put back into the system is about that 3,000 gigalitres. I would say that perhaps the overallocation has occurred since 1969.

Are the proposed transition arrangements sufficient? To date, irrigators have contributed 92 gigalitres in South Australia through buyback and some on-farm efficiency. I believe the review in 2015 does not have enough teeth; that review will just see some new reforms starting to impact, with buybacks, with on-farm efficiencies, with efficiencies gained through works and measures in our river management, through environmental assets.

I think that with the transition arrangements we should have another review in 2019. That is when that plan is to be implemented, and I say that we should be reviewing the plan in 2019 to see where it is taking us. Again, this plan needs to be adaptive, it needs to be able to be modified along the way, and to date we have competing interests. We have people hell-bent on a number, and they are not looking at the adaptability of the plan.

With other terms, I would really like to address the salinity and the river heights, and these can be addressed in many ways. When we have lower river levels, in particular, we look at people who are impacted, people being able to access water, people being able to wet dry wetlands. We need to look at money already on the table, and we particularly need to look at the $110 million through the Riverine Recovery Project.

That would take people off those backwaters and lagoons so that they are not dependent on sucking water from them, and it would also enable those backwaters to be managed. Today we see that a lot of those backwaters, those environmental assets, are not managed: water flows in, and when the river levels drop water flows out. There is nothing there to manage them. Again, that is something else that needs to be addressed.

Obviously climate change and groundwater have been issues, or an extension of the plan. I am very concerned about the lack of science and the lack of evidence and the authority wanting to release some 2,600 gigalitres of groundwater. Groundwater was once surface water; we are trying to address one problem and creating another problem. I think the plan to put back 2,750 into the surface water system and take out 2,600 gigalitres of groundwater really does need to be researched. Science tells us that there is a connection between groundwater and surface water.

Again, the constraints: towns, bridges, roads, causeways, the shape of the valley, the levee banks. I might add that the levee banks in Renmark will not be too much of a constraint to any of the river flows because they are in such poor condition. However, back to the crux of it: the constraints are the issue around the Murray-Darling Basin Authority using the number of 2,750. Without constraints, we could put down 4,000 gigalitres into our system.

With compliance, all extractions from the natural point of take from the river need to be metered. In terms of solutions, we look at many solutions across the basin. We should be looking at solutions in our own backyard, not just pointing upstream and saying that they caused the problem and they need to fix it. For many of those solutions, we need to look at our environmental assets, we need to look at on-farm, we need to look at irrigators, and we need to look at an audit. An audit right across the basin will give an independent assessment of just where we can find water to put back into the system.

Sadly, our South Australian government has focused on a number and a legal challenge. This plan today gives us an opportunity for reform—something that has not been achieved for over 120 years.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:34): I, too, rise to support the 64th report of the Natural Resources Committee, entitled Water Resources Management in the Murray-Darling Basin: Volume 3. I would like to acknowledge the Presiding Member (the member for Ashford), Steph Key, and the committee for being very inclusive of local members in the research into this report. It was pleasing that the committee invited local members along. I was glad to be involved in the meetings at Goolwa and the surrounding area and also around Murray Bridge and Mannum. It was very much a tripartisan committee, with Labor, Liberal and Independent members.

Much has been said already in this place, but we certainly need major reform in the River Murray. As the member at the bottom end of the river and as a former River Murray shadow minister, I know only too well of the carnage that was caused by the most recent drought and the over-allocation that was imposed on this state, especially on my electorate of Hammond.

We have many competing interests below Lock 1. We have a tourism industry with houseboats and a farming industry that wants only to draw water. We had water that was below the height of the siphons and we also saw a time where it looked as though Adelaide's water supply was under threat because the government was telling us that it could not lower the pumps, which was an engineering solution that was finally achieved.

We also saw over that time a flawed proposal to build the Wellington weir at Wellington, and this shows just how desperate things got. The government spent something like $14 million or $15 million on approach roads to that site. Thankfully, nothing else was spent there. This shows just how desperate the situation became in this state. I still believe that the government at the time did not negotiate enough emergency water to get us through.

The River Murray swamps were rehabilitated several years ago for close on $30 million, and I have mentioned this in the report. There is a real disaster happening down there now, where we have seen major cracking in these swamps. We have seen stock disappear into cracks in the landscape. It is said that to rehabilitate these swamps again would cost about $2,000 a hectare, and potentially up to $50 million.

As I reported to the committee, we must either do this properly or not at all. If we are going to rehabilitate the Lower Murray swamps, we need to get on with it and we need to do them all, instead of leaving out pockets, which is what happened last time under the Labor government. This was once a bountiful part of the Lower Murray. I remember going past as a child, and later in life, seeing these fantastic green swamps that were providing such great feed for the dairy industry and for this state. This is a major problem.

One of the other issues was riverbank slumping. I have mentioned it in this place before. I was out with some people getting photos of the slumping by a marina at Murray Bridge and, in the background, just as the shot was being taken, a piece of the river fell in. We caught it on film, so to speak. We noticed that, during that period, three cars went into the river, and I think only one came out. So there are still two cars in there. Thankfully no-one was in them at the time. These were desperate times, especially below Lock 1.

We see what happened with Lake Albert. It soon became too saline to use and it recorded EC levels of salinity in the tens of thousands. Still to this day we see salinity averages in Lake Albert of about 4,800 EC. It is just terrible that farmers cannot access that water for irrigation. Some are now putting in a pipeline through to Lake Alexandrina so that they do not have to rely on the emergency water that was piped to them through the SA Water pipeline. That water was badly needed at the time because some dairy farmers were spending up to $5,000 a week just to cart in water. So there has been a massive cost, a massive loss to the industry, a massive loss to the population in that area, and a massive loss of jobs.

We saw private desalination plants go in around these lakes and now we have an EPA program to impose a tax on these people who spent well over $200,000. In fact, one property owner spent close to $1 million all up so that he could make himself self-sufficient through having a desalination plant, yet now we see a group that wants to tax these plants, so essentially the message I am getting is that people will just shut them down and mothball them. This is the reward that people get for looking after themselves.

Some of these plants were installed around Lake Alexandrina; also in Clayton and Goolwa where there is another side of the tourism industry, apart from the fact that the mouth was closed up, thousands of boaties who usually use the waterways around there did not have the water to operate. I must commend the people of Goolwa for hanging in there and still running events like the Wooden Boat Festival when there was very little water in the river channel flowing out to the mouth.

It was a real struggle. Many boats left the area and not all of them have come back by any means, but it is looking good at the minute. We must make sure that we have good water in the area for this part of the river, and it is a very important part. Obviously food production is extremely important, but the needs of boaties for recreation and as somewhere to wind down is also important. So there are many needs up and down the river, and I note the member for Chaffey's comments. His irrigators and my irrigators were reduced to minimal levels of irrigation and this is where one big deficit in water management is: even though we are supposedly on high security water, we cop the biggest penalty as far as allocations in this state. I want to talk about some of the recommendations coming from the committee:

1. salinity targets for Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert of less than 1,000 EC and 1,500 EC, respectively, for 95% of the time measured as a rolling average over a 10 year period;

I think that sets a very good target instead of having some so-called magical number. These numbers were modelled on different hydrological modelling: the 2,750 gigalitres as outlined in the plan and the 4,000 that the state government seems intent on pursuing. The second recommendation:

2. water height targets for below Lock 1, with the height of Lake Alexandrina to remain above 0.5m AHD for 95% of the time measured as a rolling average over a 10 year period;

That is extremely important for the people on the Lower Murray swamps and others who want to be able to access water through inlets onto their properties, or through their siphons and pumps. The third recommendation:

3. targets that never allow water height downstream of Lock 1 to fall below mean sea level;

That is absolutely essential with regard to the health of the environment and the salinity and acidity issues that we saw during the drought. The fourth recommendation:

4. targets that will see the Murray Mouth open with river flows for 100% of the time;

That is a very important target inasmuch as for a small percentage of that time it may need mechanical dredging. We do need to keep the mouth open to keep the end of the river alive and to keep the Coorong alive. I also note:

5. stronger requirements for monitoring and evaluation, including in relation to salinity and water height below Lock 1;

There should be more permanent monitors being monitored all the time as far as salinity and height with regard to the river. We need to get on with the job, we need to get on with the plan and we need to make sure that South Australia never again experiences the utter carnage that happened before. It could have been irrigators who had access to water above Lock 1 who had to spend a fortune getting water in, or people downstream of Lock 1 who could not access water at all, and it sent many people to the wall. Also, the environment suffered, the economy suffered, and everyone in this state suffered. I commend the committee for the work it has done and I hope the government takes notice of this report.

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (11:45): I would like to thank the committee and also the members in this house for their cooperation this morning, because we are really keen to see this report actually being a submission that we will forward to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and, if we can pass this report today, that will allow that to happen. So, thank you everyone, and I commend the report to the house.

Motion carried.

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