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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-06-18 Daily Xml
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IRRIGATION BUYBACK

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. S.M. Kanck:

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.

To which the Hon. C.V. Schaefer has moved to amend after paragraph 1 by inserting new paragraph 1A as follows—

1A. Calls on the government to acknowledge the critical state that the Lower Lakes and Coorong now faces, to further acknowledge that any action arising from the recent MOU will have no benefit to the region within the next three years and take immediate action to acquire water to preserve this vital environmental and commercial asset.

(Continued from 9 April 2008. Page 2362.)

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (17:09): I move:

Leave out paragraph 1 and insert new paragraph as follows:

1. The state government commends the Rudd Labor government on its announcement of the MOU for the Murray-Darling Basin and commends the federal government on their announcement of a 10-year plan with $12.9 billion investment in water priorities which includes $3.1 million for the buyback of water.

After paragraph 1 insert new paragraph 1A as follows:

1A. Commends the federal government on its announcement of 'Water for the Future' and notes the Lower Lakes and Coorong and Murray Mouth form one of the Murray-Darling Basin's icon sites which therefore identifies these locations where recovered water is prioritised for use.

The reason I move these amendments is that I think we all realise how important the issue of the River Murray is and the problems we have with the River Murray. The state government and the federal government have always viewed this issue as being one needing bipartisan support. The state government supported the Howard federal government's $10 billion national plan for water security. We did this, even though, whilst all the promises were made, not one drop of water was purchased for the environment by the former federal government.

We are strongly supportive of the new federal government's recent decision to spend $50 million to buy back water licences from an over-allocated river system. Of course, we recognise that this amount will only buy a small volume (25 gigalitres) of the estimated 1,500 gigalitres required for a healthy river. However, as has been recognised by the Prime Minister and the federal Minister for Climate Change and Water, this is only the first step.

On 26 March 2008, Prime Minister Rudd and first ministers from across the Murray-Darling Basin forged an historic agreement for the future of the basin. All parties agreed to a new approach to drive reform by securing water for people, farms and the long-term health of the basin. This deal included the purchase of water from willing sellers. On 29 April 2008, the federal Minister for Climate Change and Water announced the federal government's new 10-year $12.9 billion investment in water priorities, to be known as 'Water for the Future'. The new program includes $3.1 billion for the buyback of water entitlements for irrigators.

The South Australian government is committed to recovering water to provide water for environmental purposes. We recognised some time ago that the purchase of water from willing sellers for environmental needs was a long-term commitment. Other ways we intend to recover water is by improving water use efficiency from irrigation districts and by reducing evaporative losses. We have already taken action to recover water.

Under the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council's Living Murray initiative, South Australia was the first state to have water accredited on the Murray-Darling Commission Environmental Water Register. This comprises 13 gigalitres of water that was made available to the environment as a result of efficiencies within the Loxton irrigation district following rehabilitation of the water supply system, and the purchase of water from irrigators on the Lower Murray reclaimed irrigation areas. Our target under the Living Murray First Step is to recover a total of 35 gigalitres, and with similar efforts in Victoria and New South Wales, a total of 500 gigalitres is intended to be recovered by mid-2009.

However, this is only a first step. It is essential that additional water from upstream is secured for the environment. This poses a problem for South Australia. Under the Living Murray agreement, we have no authority to purchase water for the environment from outside the state. This is where it is critical that the commonwealth government takes the lead in purchasing water and in establishing a water management authority to coordinate the use of this water.

South Australia will also continue to support water use efficiency programs that result in real savings of high security water. Renmark Irrigation Trust recently received $500,000 Australian government funding for irrigation modernisation planning. At a recent meeting with the Renmark Irrigation Trust Board, I found real enthusiasm coming from the local community to put in place new irrigation management practices that bring benefits to their industry and to the environment.

We will continue to advocate for environmental water to be treated equally with other water. The River Murray will not survive if water is made available to the environment only when it is not needed to meet other requirements. The federal government should be commended for entering the market to purchase water from willing sellers for the environment. The recovered water will be prioritised for use on icon sites like the Lower Lakes, the Coorong and the Murray mouth.

The Hon. M. PARNELL (17:16): The Greens are pleased to support this timely motion, an issue that is certainly more important than many of the things we debate here; in fact, it is of critical importance. As well as commending the Hon. Sandra Kanck for bringing this motion to the council, I indicate my strong support for the Hon. Caroline Schaefer's amendment to the motion, which is remarkably timely given the events of the past day or two in relation to the Lower Lakes and Coorong. I will oppose the Hon. Russell Wortley's self-serving amendments, which are designed to paint the Rudd Labor government into a position that it does not deserve; that is, it gives the perception of real action rather than words.

The motion is timely and comes on for a vote today because we have had over the past day or so some revelations about information that has been provided to the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council that indicates that the situation in South Australia's Lower Lakes and Coorong is absolutely dire and that the fate of those wetlands will be decided in months rather than years. Greens Senator Rachel Siewart, the federal senator responsible for water, issued a statement earlier today calling for an emergency rescue water package for the Coorong and Lower Lakes. Senator Siewart's statement says:

Unless 450 gigalitres of water can be delivered to the Coorong and Lower Lakes through winter and spring, these ecosystems will hit a crucial tipping point, beyond which acidity problems will be out of control and the runaway collapse of these ecosystems is almost certain.

The senator's statement goes on to say things we all know—that it is an internationally listed site under the RAMSAR convention—but the most important thing in her statement is that she draws attention to the recent revelation that in May the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council received a scientific report that said that we only had six months to act, yet that body is not going to meet again until I think November, by which time the window of opportunity to put in place a rescue package may well have been lost.

I also put on the record that I do not find helpful the comments of our own water security minister (Hon. Karlene Maywald), who on radio this morning said that these simplistic options, as she calls them, in relation to putting water back into the system were not worth pursuing. She said on 891 this morning:

We could drain Cubbie Station and it wouldn't get the water down here into South Australia, that's the problem. It's sitting right up there in Queensland. There is one difficulty in making these simplistic assumptions, is how do you get that water from up there down to here without losing it all before it gets here. That's the logistics we're dealing with and simplistic solutions do not help the debate.

The Hon. Sandra Kanck: Well, leave it up there.

The Hon. M. PARNELL: As the Hon. Sandra Kanck says, do we just leave it up there? There is a method of getting the water from there to here: it is called the River Murray, and it will not all evaporate before it gets here.

To give the minister some credit, there are some issues in relation to intermediate storages that we need to deal with, and in particular we need to look at the storages in New South Wales and Queensland, in particular the Menindie Lakes. The Greens today have called for federal water minister Penny Wong to secure the release of water stored in the Menindie Lakes and to purchase some of the water in other major storages in northern New South Wales.

The Greens also propose to encourage irrigators to loan water as part of a rescue package, and that these irrigators be later rewarded for their efforts with extra water in future. The situation is so dire that we are looking at desperate measures. We know that the indicators of ecosystem health are now in the red. The water birds, fish, frogs, turtles and native plants that make up and rely on the ecosystem are now all on the line. Because it is a major rescue operation, and because the need is urgent, we have to put in place measures now and not wait for the Murray-Darling Ministerial Council to meet again in October.

The scientific report the ministerial council has been sitting on sums up well the situation we are in and supports the Hon. Sandra Kanck's motion for an urgent inflow of water to be acquired. The summary of the report states:

The long-term reduced flows have reduced the resilience of this system to harsh conditions, such as the current drought, and have left it on the brink of ecological collapse. The record low inflows for the River Murray into South Australia have accelerated the ecological decline of the region to such an extent that species are unable to adapt to the changes, with some endangered native fish now only surviving in captivity. An early impact from low inflows was the need to continuously dredge the mouth to ensure some connectivity between the sea and the Coorong. A further impact was the closure of the barrages, preventing spawning and recruitment of fish and other biota. Receding lake levels, inability to operate the fishways, exposure of acid sulphate soils and rising salinity followed this.

The terrestrial and aquatic habitat condition has become severely degraded. Large areas of wetlands and lake margins have dried, over 1,000 ha of sediment has acidified, and salinities are 3-5 times higher than pre-drought conditions.

Usually, Lake Alexandrina flows into Lake Albert and maintains its water level. The connection between the lakes is now very shallow and there is a very low gradient between the lakes. The Murray-Darling Basin Commission has approved the Lake Albert pumping project that will enable an average of 400ML of water to be pumped from Lake Alexandrina to Lake Albert each day for six months. This will cover losses from Lake Albert during this time thus maintaining its current lake level and preventing further exposure of sulfidic sediment. After this time, a greater volume (up to 1 GL per day) will be needed to prevent the lake level from dropping or other options will need to be considered.

The report concludes:

The habitat condition decline has resulted in major ecological impacts including the localised loss or decline of native fish species, tortoise deaths due to an invasive species, declining frog and bird numbers, and negative impacts on vegetation in and around the lakes. There is a shift in ecological state occurring and further predicted decreases in water level in the Lower Lakes could result in salinities and acidity that destroys their entire ecological character. The decline in ecological character can only be halted and reversed if substantial freshwater inflows are received within the next six months

So, that is the call: within the next six months. I commend the Hon. Sandra Kanck for putting this matter on the Notice Paper and for bringing it to a conclusion today. We do need to call on the federal government to urgently commence the purchase of water from irrigators for environmental flows. The $3 billion has been allocated, and we need to be using it now. As I have said, I also strongly support the Hon. Caroline Schaefer's amendment, which focuses our mind even more on our own Coorong and Lower Lakes, but I do oppose the Hon. Russell Wortley's motion because the federal government has clearly not done enough.

The Hon. SANDRA KANCK (17:25): I thank all honourable members who have contributed to this debate—it is clear that everyone recognises that we have a problem—and I thank the Hon. Caroline Schafer for her amendment; it is one which I accept and with which I am very comfortable. However, for a number of reasons, I cannot accept the amendments proposed by the Hon. Mr Wortley. In framing the motion, I was very careful to make sure that it neither condemned nor commended anyone. I wanted to keep it as non-political as one can under these circumstances, when you are talking about writing to the Prime Minister. Unfortunately, the Hon. Mr Wortley's amendment has gone down the path of making it party political.

I will talk about some of the content of that and indicate why I cannot accept it. In the first instance, the Hon. Mr Wortley says that he wants it amended to include a statement that says that 'the state government commends'. Maybe that says something about the Labor Party in this place—that it thinks the Legislative Council belongs to the state government. If there were to be such an amendment, it ought to be 'the Legislative Council'. The fact is that the Labor Party does not own the Legislative Council. So, the wording is incorrect. Also, later on in that same sentence, the Hon. Mr Wortley talks about '$1 million' when, in fact, the agreement that was reached was $3.1 billion.

The Hon. C.V. Schaefer interjecting:

The Hon. SANDRA KANCK: I acknowledge the interjection from the Hon. Caroline Schaefer. What is interesting is that, at the time the MOU was signed, the Rudd government did set $3.1 billion, and it seemed to me that this was just this little bit of one-upmanship to say, 'We went one better than John Howard's $3 billion,' and I cannot say that I was particularly impressed by that little bit of one-upmanship, anyhow.

I do not quite know why the Hon. Mr Wortley is so gung-ho about this, because this MOU is not particularly strong. It is still, in a sense, under negotiation; there are more meetings to go (I think in October this year) to further consider it, and what is there gives almost nothing to South Australia. I think all members would be aware that, under that MOU, Victoria does not have to do anything for 10 years—it gets all its existing entitlements; it does not have to cut back on anything—and I do not see that this chamber should be particularly excited about it. The second section of the Hon. Mr Wortley's motion, again, apart from being party political and barracking for his own, also fails to—

The Hon. R.D. Lawson interjecting:

The Hon. SANDRA KANCK: —yes—recognise some of the facts about which the Hon. Mr Wortley, being a member of the Natural Resources Committee, should be aware. This section of the wording he proposes talks about the Murray-Darling Basin icon sites. However, when Wendy Craik from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission appeared before the Natural Resources Committee, in I think late April, I specifically asked her a question about water being available for the Coorong, and she very clearly said that that was not one of the sites to which they would be directing water at the present time. So, I do not understand why the Hon. Mr Wortley has included that, given that he has that knowledge.

The timing of the motion and bringing it to a vote today is obviously not something I had any advance notice of in terms of the leaked report showing that certain wetlands in the system are going to die—the situation is almost irremediable or irredeemable (maybe irredeemable and irremediable)—if they do not get any substantial amounts of water by October. So, a lot is happening on this issue in terms of statements and maybe memoranda of understanding and research that keep on being released.

The reality is that South Australia remains at the sewer end of the Murray-Darling Basin. As a parliament, I think we have to become much more active on this issue. Last week, I attended the Conservation Council's conference, where the keynote speaker, Peter Cosier from the Wentworth Group, attacked South Australians for not being more vocal and fighting the good fight to save the Murray River. Again, I indicate support for the Hon. Caroline Schaefer's amendment but not for that of the Hon. Russell Wortley, and I thank all members for their support of this motion.

The Hon. R.P. Wortley's amendment negatived; the Hon. Caroline Schaefer's amendment carried; motion as amended carried.

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