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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-04-29 Daily Xml
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Parliamentary Committees

NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: MURRAY-DARLING BASIN (VOLUME 1)

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:52): I move:

That the report of the committee, on water resources management in the Murray Darling Basin, Volume 1: 'The Fellowship of the River', be noted.

This is the first of three reports of the Natural Resources Committee relating to this inquiry. The Hon. Sandra Kanck, formerly a member of this council, brought this inquiry to the committee by way of a motion moved in the Legislative Council on 1 August 2007. Ms Kanck accompanied the committee on the Murray-Darling Basin fact-finding tours, and she was involved in questioning witnesses and collecting material for this first report although, as members would be aware, Ms Kanck retired from parliament in January 2009, ending her membership of the Natural Resources Committee.

The terms of reference for this inquiry required the committee to consider the uses of the Murray-Darling Basin waters and the impacts of this use on South Australia. Consideration was given to and opinions sought regarding forms of agriculture and crops and whether these were appropriate for the basin environment. Due to the broad nature of this inquiry and our desire to undertake thorough consultation, committee members resolved to produce a series of three reports to outline findings over the course of the inquiry.

Inquiries were made into the system of water entitlements, including water allocations and licensing, and the impact of water trading and the Australian government's water buyback, including the potential for profiteering. Further, more detailed investigations on these issues will inform subsequent committee reports.

Committee activities relating to this inquiry thus far have extended to four fact-finding tours and taking evidence from 93 witnesses, including recognised experts in their respective fields. The first fact-finding tour was to the Southern Murray-Darling Basin and included Mildura, Kerang, Shepparton, Deniliquin, Griffith and Coleambally. The second fact-finding tour was to the northern basin, and it included visits to Menindee Lakes, Moree, Goondiwindi, St George, Cubbie Station, and Bourke. The third fact-finding tour was a tour of South Australia's Lower Lakes, which members undertook in the company of interstate irrigators, who travelled down at short notice and at their own expense to meet with Lower Lakes landholders and others. A fourth fact-finding tour to South Australia's Riverland to visit Berri and Barmera was undertaken last week, with details to be included in the next report.

The 93 witnesses sought out for evidence included a wide range of irrigators, local environment groups, CSIRO scientists, the chief executive of the now defunct Murray-Darling Basin Commission, irrigation cooperatives, dairy farmers, small business owners, and well respected academics and water experts. So, you can see that we have travelled quite extensively around the basin for this inquiry and consulted quite widely with a lot of different sorts of people.

In particular, the committee was privileged to hear from the (sadly, now deceased) Professor Peter Cullen AO, esteemed founding member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, ex Adelaide Thinker in Residence, national water commissioner, wetland ecologist and big man of water. Quotes from Professor Cullen are included in this report.

One further fact finding tour is planned for later this year to the Barmah Choke, Hume and Dartmouth dams and the Snowy Mountains Scheme. This final trip, together with evidence from additional expert witnesses, will provide the necessary material to complete this inquiry.

All up, this inquiry has been distressing to undertake, when we have seen and heard at first hand the magnitude of the crisis facing this once mighty river system and the suffering of the communities living along it. It also is distressing when we realise that this crisis is largely the result of human activity and, as such, could have been avoided.

The crisis playing out in the basin and witnessed by the committee stems from two main historical facts. The first fact is the history of disparate control of basin water resources, with four different state governments managing water as if there were four separate and independent basins rather than one interconnected system. This convoluted state of affairs resulted in widely acknowledged over-allocation of water and culminated in an extraction cap set in the 1990s. While the cap was a good first step towards sustainable management, it was never intended or able to manage a long-term reduction in rainfall.

This brings us to the second historical fact which has inflamed the crisis, and that is the dramatic and unanticipated reduction in rainfall which has variously been attributed to the drought and climate change and which has resulted in record low inflows for the past three years. Committee members heard that, while most experts are hoping for rain, they are expecting drier basin conditions to continue into the foreseeable future, requiring significant changes to basin water management regimes.

We have been hearing from experts and lay people alike that their expectations are that things are likely to get much worse for the basin and its inhabitants before they get better. For example, on its trip to Bottle Bend in New South Wales the committee witnessed at firsthand a shocking example of acid sulphate soils. It is difficult to explain exactly what we saw there, and there are some particularly graphic photos in the report, should members wish to have a look.

Put simply, what is happening is that a billabong previously flooded as a consequence of river regulation and artificially high water levels has been allowed to dry out, which has exposed sulfidic elements to the air where they have oxidised. This means that, when they are re-wetted by flows or local rain, thousands of tonnes of sulphuric acid and other toxins, including heavy metals, are released, killing off wetland fish, trees and other vegetation.

In simple terms, this poisoned wetland now holds the equivalent of battery acid, a toxic pulse waiting ready to travel down the river whenever sizeable flows are reinstated. Of course, we hope that one day there will be another sizeable flow. If this same process is allowed to replicate at many other sites—and we are told that in New South Wales some 20 per cent of basin wetlands could be affected—the toxic acid and heavy metal pulse could be very damaging indeed.

As members would be aware, this is the same acidification process that scientists seek to prevent from happening in South Australia's Lower Lakes. Bottle Bend showed the committee very graphically the importance of taking steps to avoid this kind of acidification locally by ensuring the lake is not allowed to dry out.

Over the course of this inquiry the committee made a number of findings which may be of interest. The committee found, first, as I mentioned before, that basin resources are over-allocated, with problems made worse by reduced rainfall attributed to climate change. The general consensus was that, while we can hope for more improved rainfall, we should not anticipate a return to much wetter conditions, and unfortunately communities will have to adapt to less water.

Secondly, the committee found that annual crops such as cotton and rice are opportunistic users of water and, as such, particularly suited to the north Murray-Darling Basin, where flows and consequently irrigation are more boom and bust than in the south.

While cotton and rice are often targeted by critics for being excessively thirsty—and they are undoubtedly thirsty crops—the expert opinion of the Wentworth Group scientists, Professor Peter Cullen and Professor Mike Young, was that one-off, annual crops, such as rice and cotton, were a necessary part of the mix and likely to play a greater role in some regions as water supplies become less reliable overall. Both these well-respected experts emphasised that it was much more important to fix up the systems of water entitlements and water trading, rather than to consider banning any specific crop.

Thirdly, the committee heard that, while pain is expected to be felt by all communities in all parts of the basin, particular frustration and hardship were experienced by the often forgotten non-farming members of irrigation communities. For example, bakers, newsagents, hoteliers and hairdressers will suffer the flow-on effects of less water, less irrigation and less income into their communities overall.

Common themes raised by witnesses included the lack of interstate cooperation, the poorly functioning water trading regime, the water buyback and the number of river communities in apparently irreversible decline. A final matter I bring to the attention of the council is that the problems of the Murray-Darling Basin are not intractable but that we as a nation have to make some quite difficult decisions regarding its future.

Communities in the basin are already undergoing forced structural adjustment, with some people already going broke and selling up. It is up to residents and governments to develop a vision for the future, and we have seen signs that this is already underway. We must manage and facilitate this ongoing process of restructure to minimise pain and suffering.

I thank all those who gave their time to assist the committee with this inquiry. I also commend the members of the committee for their contribution and support: the Presiding Member, Mr John Rau, and the Hons Graham Gunn, Sandra Kanck, Steph Key, Caroline Schaefer and Lea Stevens, who have worked cooperatively through the inquiry. Finally, I thank the committee staff, Knut and Patrick, for their assistance.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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