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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-02-27 Daily Xml
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IRRIGATION BUYBACK

The Hon. SANDRA KANCK (16:32): I move:

That this council—

1. Notes the crisis in the Murray-Darling basin and calls on the Rudd Labor government to urgently commence the purchase of water from irrigators for environmental flows, utilising the $3 billion allocated by the Howard government in 2007 for this purpose;

2. Directs the President to convey this resolution to the Prime Minister of Australia.

The River Murray is dying. The red gums that depend upon that river have been dying for years and now, as the water level drops, the exposed river banks and lake beds are turning acid. There is the threat of salinity seeping into the river and wetlands as the water levels fall. Fifty to 80 per cent of the wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin have been severely damaged or completely destroyed, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The Coorong is dying. Prof. David Paton of Adelaide University found in his annual survey of the Coorong's health that there were no fish in the whole of the south lagoon, which is 50 kilometres long and up to 5 kilometres wide, and as a consequence there are no fish-eating birds. The pelicans disappeared from the southern lagoon three years ago and the fairy terns that relied on the Coorong as a prime breeding ground no longer nest there and they face regional extinction.

Migratory wading birds, which relied on the Coorong as a rest and feeding site before heading to their breeding grounds in Alaska and Siberia, have dropped in number from 250,000 in the 1980s to about 35,000. The communities that depend on the river are struggling. This ranges from layoffs in the Riverland to the sort of hardship revealed down on the Murray Lakes, where farmers are crawling out over the mud to get hoses into the water for their stock.

Our reckless endangerment of this continent has wiped out many plants and animals and now it looks like we will be the generation that killed a river. The causes of this are no mystery. The culprit is not drought: it is reckless and, one might say, hoon irrigation. More than 80 per cent of the average annual volume of water in the Murray is diverted for industry and domestic use. Irrigation accounts for 95 per cent of this. As a consequence, median annual Murray River flows to the sea are now around one fifth of what they were at federation in 1901.

The occasions when there is no flow at the River Murray mouth have increased from one year in 20 under natural conditions to one year in two under current conditions. What more convincing case do we need to argue for irrigation licences to be brought back? It is clear that we need urgent and dramatic action. We need strong leadership, but instead big business and bad irrigation practices are sucking the life out of the river, and there is no sign of that stopping.

Last year the scandal of the managed investment schemes began to get public recognition. Under these schemes big businesses have continued to plant timber, almonds or apples along the river, even near Berri, despite the drought. Somehow, getting water for them was not a problem, despite what was then recognised as a record-breaking drought. Then there is cotton farming. In 2000-01, the last normal year of production for that industry, the cotton industry used 2,900 gigalitres of water. That is more than South Australia's total annual allocation of 1,850 gigalitres. Similarly, the amount of water used for rice growing is around 1,900 gigalitres—again, more than the entire allocation to the state of South Australia.

Scientists have been saying that the Murray-Darling needs at least 1,500 gigalitres to survive, and most political parties have said that they agree to these environmental flows. If we paid cotton or rice farmers not to plant crops for just one year we could probably have that 1,500 gigalitres. For several years now I have been asking why we are growing cotton in Australia—a flood irrigated crop in areas with an annual rainfall of less than 300 millimetres. I have been criticised for attacking cotton farming. The former director of the South Australian Museum, Tim Flannery, recently suggested that a positive of cotton is that as an annual it needs to be planted only when there is rain and that therefore it can respond to the climate. That might be a theoretical advantage, but let us look at what happens in reality.

In 2004 there were floods in Queensland, and local graziers claimed that Cubbie Station funnelled the Culgoa River into its storages, denying water to graziers downstream. Pop Peterson from Brenda Station says Cubbie has a diversion channel three times the width of the river. He told ABC Radio, 'The water was roaring in through there, and what doesn't go into the diversion channel gets backed up by their weir.'

So, they got the bulk of it. I understand that between 1994 and 2004 irrigation properties on the Lower Balonne River system, north of the New South Wales border, built dams and water storage systems capable of retaining 1.2 million megalitres, or twice the water capacity of Sydney Harbour. Cubbie station, just near the New South Wales border, stores 38 per cent of that total. Four years later there has been rain and flooding in Queensland yet again, and again cotton farmers are siphoning off the water that could be recharging the Darling River system.

I have previously called for the state government to buy up the Cubbie Station water licence. Prior to these rains it was a golden opportunity; now that has passed. ABC TV's Landline last Sunday reported that, since the rains in Queensland in the last week of December last year, Cubbie Station has already diverted water to the extent of 150,000 megalitres. With 8 metre high dam walls, they can. Landline reported that graziers on the New South Wales side of the border claimed that only 17 per cent of the water from Queensland is coming across the border; although the Queensland government says it is more like 26 per cent. We should be grateful, it seems, that three-quarters of the water is being retained in Queensland.

Craig Wallace, the Queensland resources minister, says that his state has got it right on irrigation allocations. I would like him to come down to South Australia to confront our Lower Lakes irrigators and tell them that to their faces. The promoters of cotton and rice argue that they have created jobs and sustained communities; however, we can find other jobs and industries for those who depend on cotton, but we cannot find or make another River Murray.

I invite members to recall how the federal government closed down the timber industry at Ravenshoe in Queensland. As a nation, we decided that that land and the vegetation it supported ought not to be used for a particular industry. Paul Keating showed that it could be done. It is obvious to anyone not blinded by a vested interest that we cannot keep pulling water out of our river.

I note that Professor Mike Young of Adelaide uni this week released a paper in concert with a colleague from the CSIRO, Jim McColl, called 'A future proofed basin: a new water management regime for the Murray-Darling Basin.' He begins by saying:

The first and arguably most important test of the new Rudd government's capacity to fix the national water crisis will come in the Murray-Darling Basin and, more particularly, in the southern half of the basin. This region is often described as the River Murray system, where the river system is. It's aquifers, its environment and the livelihoods of people who depend upon it are under threat.

We need visionary thinking. In January last year, John Howard gave us a glimpse of that with his $10 billion water plan. It was a hastily conceived, politically inspired plan, but it was a plan. It included $3 billion to buy back water for the environment and billions more to line channels and ensure accurate metering of water so that we know how much water is in the system; but then progress stopped. John Howard blamed Victoria for not signing up. A year later, the new Rudd Labor government is still hiding behind Victoria.

We should not accept this deception. Victoria's reluctance to sign up should not be used by the Rudd government as an excuse for inaction. Certainly, longer term solutions such as new governance arrangements for the river are complicated and will take time, but the water buyback, which is a short term emergency measure, can be implemented very quickly, and it does not need the agreement of any state.

Federal minister Penny Wong does not need John Brumby's permission to spend $3 billion of federal money buying up water from irrigators and corporations. She has just announced a meagre $50 million mini buyback, so she is showing that that is the case. She does not need Victoria's permission to fund local irrigation trusts to line channels. In fact, a flow of federal cheques to New South Wales and South Australia would soon bring Victoria to the negotiating table for fear of missing out.

Kevin Rudd, when leader of the opposition, placed a lot of importance on South Australia as part of his strategy to win the election. I hope that South Australia and the plight of the Murray were not just pawns in an election chess game. I hope that we do not have another federal government that thinks that if all is well east of the great dividing range then the rest of the country is irrelevant. A buyback is sensible and practical and does not diminish the rights of holders of water licences.

There will, of course, be a need to give some thought to the criteria governing the buyback. For example, permanent water should initially be sought from unsustainable crops such as cotton. Where a buyback leads to a loss of jobs, income support and development of alternative industries will be needed. Again, I hark back to what happened with the timber industry at Ravenshoe. I assume that the federal bureaucracy would have developed these sorts of guidelines anyhow after John Howard announced the buyback in January last year but, if it has not, it would not take long for an expert group to come up with a blueprint. I know that a water buyback is not the complete answer, but this is an emergency measure, and the death of a river is an emergency if anything is.

We need a longer term process that protects the environment and supports the communities that depend upon it, and already our best minds are putting forward ideas. I draw members' attention to that paper by Professor Mike Young and Jim McColl that I have already referred to. We cannot sit around waiting for these long-term governance arrangements to be sorted out: we need action now. If we cannot implement a buyback very quickly, pressure will build for more draconian action, such as the compulsory acquisition of water licences. This buyback is the last chance to use voluntary measures to fix this crisis.

Supporting this motion will send a clear signal to the federal Labor government and South Australian Senator Penny Wong that the people of South Australia are demanding decisive action. The time has now come for the federal government to put the river first.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. B.V. Finnigan.

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