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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-11-18 Daily Xml
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NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN

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

That the report of the committee, on Water Resources Management in the Murray-Darling Basin Volume 2 'The Two Rivers, be noted.

(Continued from 28 October 2009. Page 3725.)

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (17:45): I simply want to make a few brief comments on what I hope will be an ongoing reference to the Natural Resources Management Board on the River Murray and the River Darling catchment. This particular report is entitled 'The Two Rivers'. The committee spent some time travelling along both those waterways—or, in some cases, what is now a series of puddles— to try to assess the accuracy of some of the rumours and innuendo that are peddled within the press.

My view—and it is my individual view—is that there is no simple solution to the management of the Murray-Darling Basin. It is very easy to blame those upstream or, indeed, for them to blame those downstream, for the demise of this waterway on which not only South Australia but a great part of the eastern seaboard is dependent for not only human consumption and environmental water but also our very valuable irrigation industry.

Contrary to a number of other reports, we found no evidence of illegal activity. We found no evidence of people who were stealing or hiding water. Indeed, we found that in every case there was insufficient water for the needs of those particular water users, and in that I include the needs of the environment. I think there is a basic lack of understanding by a number of people about the difference between secure water rights, which are South Australian rights, and the less secure rights particularly of New South Wales and Queensland.

We visited, among other places, Cubbie Station and found that buying that property would be of little, if any, practical benefit to South Australia, and I concur with that finding. The size and enormity of Cubbie Station is quite breathtaking, but I need to say that it also had less than a third of the water to which it was entitled. As I have said, I think there is a lack of understanding of how their particular water allocations work. They are entitled to take a certain amount of water only when the river is flowing at a certain volume, which means, of course, that in the last four of five years of drought they have taken no water at all—and I refer not just to Cubbie Station but to all those holdings along that particular waterway.

So, the rice growers we met in Deniliquin were just as angry with us as we were with them. They were particularly incensed by a number of the press reports they had seen generated from South Australia. There has been no rice grown in Deniliquin for the last four years. Professor Mike Young put to us at one stage that perhaps we should, in fact, be grateful to the rice growing industry.

It is very easy for people to say that we should not grow rice or cotton in Australia. In fact, we are the most cost effective and least water using growers of rice and cotton in the world, and they are both annual crops. They are opportunity crops that can be sown when the water is available and not sown when it is not available, and that has been the case for some four years. By contrast, of course, in South Australia our plantings are largely permanent plantings, such as grapevines, almonds and citrus trees.

So, the devastating effect in South Australia is much more far-reaching and longstanding. I believe it takes eight years for an almond tree and about the same for a citrus tree to yield a commercial crop, whereas the rice and cotton growers and, indeed, the onion growers, etc., can react to the whims of the river.

As I have said, there are no easy solutions, and our committee does not purport to offer any easy solutions. The only solution, if there is one, is for us to start to understand the problems of each of the users and each of the states that use the water from the Murray-Darling Basin and to recognise that the allocations were granted in what appears to have been the highest rainfall 50 years since white settlement, and I believe they will have to be adjusted downwards from the top of the catchment system to the bottom.

I do not believe that we have the right to dictate who uses the water and what they use it for, provided they use it legally. But a whole of river and catchment management system must be developed without the self-serving and selfish attitudes of each state along the way. I believe this can be done only by the federal government, and it is not likely to happen while any state has the right of veto.

I think there is no more important issue, not just to South Australia but indeed to much of the agricultural lands of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. I will just make the comment that, again, while we saw no waste of water within Victoria their attitude towards what they believe is their water, their attitude towards supplying more water for them and to hell with those downstream of them, I found to be in direct contrast to the attitude of those in New South Wales and Queensland.

As I have repeatedly said, I have enjoyed my time working for the Natural Resources Committee, and I have enjoyed learning as much as I have over the past 18 months with regard to the Murray-Darling catchment system and the people whose livelihoods depend on it. I commend the committee, I commend my fellow committee members, and in particular our two staff members Knut Cudarans and Patrick Dupont. I believe they are outstanding examples of parliamentary staff; they are at all times helpful, and Patrick's report-writing skills are quite outstanding. I thank them and I thank the other members of the committee, and I recommend the rapid passage of this motion.

Motion carried.

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