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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-03-18 Daily Xml
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Murray-Darling Basin Regional Economic Diversification Program

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (14:25): Supplementary: can the minister inform the house what time frame this $25 million is on the table, given that all the other basin states have signed the funding agreement and are spending that funding?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:26): It is worthwhile, I think, giving a bit of historical context because I indeed was the person who negotiated this agreement with the previous federal government: it was in return for our agreeing to provide some degree of contribution to the 3,200 gigalitres of extra water that had to flow down the Murray River. One of the quid pro quos from South Australia was that the burden of adjustment should not fall on South Australia as a consequence of putting this additional water—

Mr Whetstone: It's not coming out of the water department.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: I know that I have done all the heavy lifting on behalf of your electorate, but if you could just listen to me for a moment. We did make it very clear to the irrigators, the farmers and the Riverland community that, in our quest for getting a healthy river, we would not cut them adrift, and I kept that commitment to them.

We insisted that, as a quid pro quo for our getting the 3,200 gigalitres, the burden of adjustment shouldn't fall on that. How that was reflected is that we had the Water Industry Alliance come to us and say, 'If we assisted to change the configuration of how we do things, we could come up with some additional water efficiencies.' They said that they needed $240 million for that purpose, and we advocated very strongly for that and we achieved that outcome. So, we asked for more from the previous federal government.

We also asked for an additional $50 million to assist the adjustment of the Riverland communities for the obvious changes they were going to have to bear because of the reduced amount of water that would be available for them. That $50 million was agreed to be a sum of money which would not affect our GST arrangements. That was the agreement—that is the agreement I struck with the previous federal government.

The problem is that, when these things disappear into the bureaucracy, they come out the other end, especially the federal bureaucracy, in a series of different buckets. One of the buckets is a $25 million bucket of funding, which is now available to South Australia. We are now being told that to access that money, despite the fact that the commonwealth are happily allocating it and telling us what we should spend it on, it is going to come out our budget through a reduction in our GST arrangements. We simply are not going to cop that.

South Australia has always done the right thing in relation to this river. We did ask for an exceptional arrangement. I know that the member for Chaffey says, 'New South Wales and Victoria don't get this deal.' Well, they don't get this deal because they don't deserve it. South Australia has always done the right thing by this river. Why on earth are you advocating for people over the border? Why aren't you sticking up for South Australia? They seem constitutionally incapable of advancing South Australia's interest, always wanting to capitulate to Eastern States' interests.

We simply want the deal that we did. We are not going to hand over money to the commonwealth or back into the GST pool to pay for the privilege of nominating a series of projects that the commonwealth are interested in supporting. We are not going to do that. We are going to get them to stick to the deal that they did with us.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert, I have heard his cry and he is warned a first time. The member for Unley is warned a second and final time, and the member for Newland is called to order.

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