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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-20 Daily Xml
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Murray-Darling Basin Plan

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (14:47): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Can the Deputy Premier update the house on recent matters concerning the Murray-Darling Basin Plan?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:48): Yes, I would like to update the house on an important process of buying water that's been occurring in the Murray-Darling Basin. This is not for the 450 gigalitres; that is to come, but it's of interest because we now know that the federal government is prepared to buy water for the 450, and there has been some debate within South Australia about the merits of that.

People in the Riverland are understandably anxious that that won't diminish the productive capacity of their area, and we are working hard with them to give feedback to the federal government about how to design the program in order to minimise or in fact eliminate any negative consequences. What was interesting to me in the most recent piece of news about the buyback that the federal government has undertaken is that they need about 44 gigalitres to get to the base level of the plan, which is a bit under 2,100 gigalitres. So they need about that and they went out to the market—not in South Australia because we have already met our contribution, but into the other states—and immediately, with the announcement of how much they were buying in the short term, there was a bizarre discussion about how much that was costing per litre.

There was $205 million being spent on 26.25 gigalitres. On the radio the other day, Tanya Plibersek said that translates—and there are ons and offs and we're averaging it out—to 0.78 of a cent for each litre: under a cent for a litre. The member for Chaffey got on the radio at the end and said that every litre was going to cost $128. I don't believe that the member for Chaffey got his own calculator out, although he may rise to make a personal explanation and say he did. We will get onto the maths, but I think he was coming off information that was in the media that may or may not have come from Perin Davey, which may or may not have been towards the end of the day for her.

But, anyway, let's disentangle this, because it seems to me that we need to understand not only whether this is a decimal place issue—which it clearly is a decimal place issue—but also why we are not even dealing with the same numbers. A gigalitre is a billion litres and a megalitre is a million litres. So let's do this much more simply.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: If I have six apples and three people, here's the maths: if I divide those six apples by three people, I get two apples per person.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: If I divide three apples by six people—I'm not sure why you would, but if you did it the other way around, you will get half a person per apple: quite different. This is where they went wrong. What they have done—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: Let's go back: you have got 26.25 gigalitres—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —and $205 million.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Chaffey is warned.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Chaffey is warned for a second time.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: What they have done is divide the other way around—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —and it comes up—sir, I don't believe that the members are able to hear me.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey, you are on a final warning. The Deputy Premier has the call.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: The way that they have done it is to come up with the answer that ought to be 1.28 litres of water per cent you spend. They have misplaced the decimal place, so it's 128, and they have pretended that that's the cost per litre. That's what has happened. We can have different opinions but we cannot have our own facts.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members to my right and left!

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