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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-12-02 Daily Xml
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MURRAY-DARLING BASIN

The Hon. R.D. LAWSON (15:37): I would like to speak on the unsatisfactory response of the South Australian government to issues relating to the Murray-Darling Basin. In March this year the government announced that a High Court challenge would be launched to overturn the Victorian government's 4 per cent water trading cap. The following month, the government announced that the challenge would be extended to tackling another 10 per cent water trading cap which the Minister for Water Security, at that time, described as 'a little-known cap'.

I interpose that it is truly amazing that our Minister for Water Security was apparently not aware of a 10 per cent trading cap which adversely affected South Australian irrigators, especially in light of the fact that the minister played a part in the so-called historic commonwealth-state water agreement announced with great fanfare in 2008. Clearly, they were entering into historic agreements without really understanding the nature of the problem.

In all events, Victoria quickly abandoned its 10 per cent cap, and one suspects that it was always a deal that it would. However, the challenge for the 4 per cent cap continues. At the time of the announcement, the Premier laughingly announced that the government was prepared to go all the way to the High Court with the challenge. Actually, the case was not going 'all the way to the High Court'; it was starting in the High Court.

The fact is that the Hon. Mr Rann should not have agreed to the so-called historic agreement without first insisting that Victoria remove its water trading caps which so disadvantage our state. Yesterday, in a contrived media event, the Premier announced that proceedings in the High Court have been issued. He said, in the course of that:

The only state that has an open free trade on water is South Australia. We want every state to follow our lead, even if we have to force it through court action. The High Court challenge is designed to keep the momentum of reforms going.

Later on he said:

One part of the jigsaw is the artificial cap that limits any free trade in water imposed by Victoria. Now we are going after them to remove the 4 per cent cap.

This just demonstrates the ad hoc piecemeal approach of this government to these important issues. The solution is plain. The commonwealth should exercise its power under the Constitution, in particular the trade and commerce power, to pass legislation which overrides those recalcitrant states that have in their measures restrictions on trade that adversely affect South Australia. These issues are not new.

I see that, in this parliament in 1906, opinions were tabled from Sir Josiah Simon, a former South Australian and commonwealth Attorney-General, QC and Patrick McMahon Glynn, a South Australian founder of Federation of substantial opinion. The state also obtained an opinion from Isaac Isaacs KC, an eminent silk in Victoria, subsequently Chief Justice of the High Court and Governor General of the commonwealth, who said that at that time South Australia had no capacity to exercise the jurisdiction of the High Court to resolve these problems.

I see also that there is a group called Murray Valley United, and they are getting together a class action through the Federal Court to seek to establish their common law rights to water, as they see it. What is the point of these court actions to try to resolve water issues in a piecemeal and self-interested way? The solution is plain. The South Australian Liberal Party has been advocating for the commonwealth to exercise its overriding powers for us to have a unified, sensible and fair resolution to this issue of the sharing of water.

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