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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-03 Daily Xml
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Parliamentary Committees

NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. R.P. Wortley:

That the 27th report of the committee, on Water Resource Management in the Murray-Darling Basin, be noted.

(Continued from 13 May 2009. Page 2295.)

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (16:55): I rise to support this interim second (or third even) interim report of the Natural Resources Committee. This report was released with some urgency following a visit by the committee to the Riverland on 22 and 23 April this year.

Mr President, you would be well aware (as are, I am sure, most of the people of South Australia) of the dire plight of the people in the Riverland, and particularly those who are dependent on irrigation, first, to supply our food and, secondly, for their income. The committee found that there is, indeed, a great deal of personal and economic suffering within that region. I spoke today in my five minute grieve about the world shortage of food and the economic and social collapse that that could cause.

It was put to us on our visit to the Riverland that, as we all know, there are two types of irrigated crops (in fact, I suppose there are many, but there are two major types): the annual crops, such as rice and melons, and so on, or what are called permanent plantings. The permanent plantings are those that are mainly grown in South Australia, in particular, citrus and almonds and, to a lesser degree, avocados, stone fruit and wine grapes. It was agreed by most of the people who spoke to us that wine grapes have a twofold problem. One is the lack of water and the other is that there is still a major glut of supply across the nation.

Last year, the government saw fit to provide irrigators with what was called a critical water allocation, which was an allocation which was sufficient purely to keep permanent plantings alive. It is certainly not enough for those people to continue to grow commercial crops: it is merely enough, as I said, to keep those plantings alive. In some cases, it is sufficient underpinning, if you like, to allow those people to buy in additional water. This year, they are entitled to only 18 per cent of their allocation. So, they need this critical water supply to ensure that they have plants into the future. The upshot of this is that, without this critical water, these people will have to lose all their crops.

For a commercial return it is a minimum turnaround on citrus of eight years; about the same on almonds; slightly less, I think, on avocados; and stone fruit is between five and seven years. The committee simply has recommended that the government again purchase sufficient water to keep those plants alive until such time as something happens. None of us is exactly sure what that will be because there continues to be a critical and tragic shortage of water up and down the Murray-Darling Basin. Without this supply these people cannot continue even to grow small acreages of what are vital foods.

It was reported to us up there that if they had sufficient water the citrus industry is actually in a shortage of supply. It is unable to supply its export market. Similarly, the stone fruit industry is booming at this time. We were informed up there that these industries, except for their lack of water, are in fact extremely viable. That raises for me an interesting conundrum, because we are currently told that the wine grape industry is in a state of collapse, yet about four to six years ago when I was still the shadow minister I had the citrus industry telling me that it must be bought out because it was no longer viable in the long term, that its industry had collapsed.

It now has a very viable—in fact, buoyant—export industry of citrus into America during its off season. Of course the other environmental concern is that if all these permanent plantings go out of production we are left with a desert—because that country has roughly, I think, 10 to 12 inch rainfall—and a huge problem with weeds and basic husbandry. Our recommendations as a committee were as follows:

(1) Subject to the availability of sufficient water, including transmission water, that the state government approve for the 2009-10 year an allocation of critical water on the same terms as was provided in the 2008-09 critical water allocations.

(2) That any decision by the state government to allocate critical water for the next season, subject to availability and transmission water, is communicated as soon as possible to irrigators of permanent plantings in the Riverland so as to enable them to most effectively plan for the next 12 months.

Of course, they are waiting, holding their breath, to know whether they will get that critical water to enable them simply to hang on for another year. We believe that this amount of water is about natural resource management as much as it is about economics. I commend the report.

Motion carried.

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