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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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LAKE EYRE BASIN

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter:

That this council—

1. Recognises the significance of Lake Eyre to South Australia’s Aboriginal, pastoral and tourism communities and its dependence on water flows from the Cooper Creek, Diamantina and Georgina rivers;

2. Expresses concern that the Queensland government has continued to refuse to consult with South Australia and other affected states regarding their plans to remove the legislative environmental protections of the Lake Eyre Basin rivers;

3. Calls on the Queensland government to maintain the current quantity and quality of water flows from the Lake Eyre Basin rivers into South Australia’s rivers flood plains and wetlands in the Lake Eyre Basin; and

4. Calls on the Queensland government to formally consult with South Australia, as a co-signatory to the Lake Eyre Basin Intergovernmental Agreement, regarding any proposal which has the potential to impact flows into our state.

(Continued from 15 October 2013.)

The Hon. M. PARNELL (21:39): I rise on behalf of the Greens to support this motion and thank the minister for bringing it to the council. In my contribution I want to focus on some of the history of the campaign to protect the wetlands of the Lake Eyre Basin because it is a campaign in which I was intimately involved for many years of my life.

In 1990 I was a representative representing the Wilderness Society in South Australia to the World Conservation Union Congress, which was being held in Australia for the first time, in Perth. As a delegate to that conference—as I said, it was called the World Conservation Union; its official title was IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources—my role was to try to get international support for the world heritage listing of the wetlands in the South Australian component of the Lake Eyre Basin.

That campaign went for a number of years and it ultimately resulted not in world heritage listing but in a less rigorous intergovernmental agreement which, according to the terms of this motion, is now proving to be worth less than it had been hoped. That is why this motion is effectively calling on Queensland to behave better in relation to its management of the Lake Eyre Basin, so that their development and their behaviour does not impact on our state, our farmers and our citizens.

In relation to this campaign, I mentioned my involvement which commenced in 1990, but in fact world heritage listing of the Lake Eyre Basin area was first proposed in 1984 by John Coulter (later Senator John Coulter), who was then the president of the Conservation Council of South Australia, and the then federal minister for the environment, Barry Cohen, was also supportive.

I recall that an ecologist by the name of Julian Reid prepared a report in 1993, entitled World Heritage Potential in the Lake Eyre Basin Region: An Ecological Appraisal of the Bigger Picture, and that ultimately kicked off a more spirited campaign. In fact, during the 1993 federal election campaign, then prime minister Keating announced his intention to proceed with world heritage listing of the Lake Eyre Basin region. This generated some public controversy. The Lake Eyre Basin catchment group was opposed to world heritage listing because local pastoralist landholders and mining industry representatives feared that the plan would threaten the viability of local properties and commercial activities.

I should say, Mr Acting President, that the South Australian pastoralists who were so opposed to the idea back then soon realised that what the campaign was trying to achieve was exactly what this motion is trying to achieve, and that is to prevent the upstream state—in particular Queensland—from behaving in such a way that affect the clean green image of pastoralists in the South Australian portion of the basin.

The world heritage campaign proceeded slowly. As I said, there was the 1993 interim report, but to investigate whether Lake Eyre should be recommended for world heritage listing, three further studies were undertaken: an assessment of the area's natural values, which was undertaken by the CSIRO; an assessment of non-Indigenous cultural values; and an assessment by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies of the area's Indigenous cultural values.

The CSIRO concluded that areas of the South Australian section of the Lake Eyre Basin, particularly the Cooper and Warburton Creek drainage systems, the Coongie Lakes, the Goyder Lagoon and Lake Eyre itself, qualified for world heritage listing on account of their natural heritage values. Based on this, the World Heritage Unit of the commonwealth department of environment reportedly took the view that—and I quote:

the South Australian section of the Lake Eyre Basin contains natural values of international significance, and a nomination to the World Heritage Committee would probably be successful. In 1998, a majority of the Lake Eyre Basin Reference Group (which had been appointed by the previous Labor government to assess the potential for World Heritage nomination) appears to have recommended that the Lake Eyre Basin be nominated for World Heritage listing. The majority report recommended initiating a World Heritage management plan for areas of the Lake Eyre Basin which had been identified by CSIRO as being of World Heritage natural value.

However, the Coalition government decided not to pursue a nomination for World Heritage listing 'due to a lack of community and State government support', and expressed the view that 'increased community efforts will deliver the best protection for the area's conservation values.

I indicate that I have been quoting from a Parliament of Australia briefing note in relation to the Lake Eyre Basin Intergovernmental Agreement Bill 2001.

Given that brief history, it is worth having a look at what the CSIRO said about this part of South Australia. The CSIRO's 1995 report, entitled 'Natural Heritage Values of the Lake Eyre Basin in South Australia: World Heritage Assessment', included the following in its executive summary:

The surface aquatic systems of the Lake Eyre Basin in South Australia are unique in Australia. These surface aquatic drainage systems occur in the driest environment in Australia, they constitute the largest internally-draining system in Australia (and one of the world's largest), they are entirely fed from an arid and semi-arid catchment, they terminate in the vast saline Lake Eyre, the biggest such lake in Australia and among the largest in the world, they are highly variable in flow pattern and therefore create a wide array of ecological conditions, they support a rich and abundant aquatic fauna, particularly large aggregations of waterbirds, and they remain entirely unregulated.

We conclude [that is, CSIRO] that Lake Eyre's size, its endorheic drainage system, and the variability of its flooding, result in it being highly distinctive on the global scale. As with Lake Eyre, the Coongie Lakes appear highly distinctive, if not unique, at the global level. Global comparisons of the Cooper and Warburton with other large rivers suggest that the former are indeed highly distinctive, if not unique, in their entirely arid catchment, in their endorheism, in their exceptionally variable hydrology, and in their termination in a large saline playa.

Our assessment suggests that the significant natural heritage values of certain surface aquatic systems of the South Australian section of the Lake Eyre Basin are of World Heritage value. These systems are the Cooper and Warburton Creek drainages, Coongie Lakes, Goyder Lagoon, and Lake Eyre North and South.

I have provided a copy of this report to the minister. While it might sound very technical and dry, probably a better description of the variability of flow of these rivers is in the analogy, which I think I may have made in this place before but I will make it again, and that is that the Cooper Creek, when it is flowing strongly in flood conditions, has more water going past the town of Innamincka than the Nile River has flowing past Khartoum. That puts this river on scale: that it is mostly dry, you could walk over it, but when it is flowing, it is absolutely raging—and it is that variability of flow which makes it globally unique and worth World Heritage listing.

The reason I have put all that on the record is that the campaign from conservation groups for World Heritage listing had two components. First of all, it was to have that global recognition that we are the custodians of something that is important on a global scale, but it was also that, as members would know, when you have a catchment that crosses state boundaries, there is no national oversight, there is no commonwealth constitutional head of power which says that the upstream state (in this case, Queensland) has to behave in a certain way to protect the interests of the downstream state, which is South Australia. There is no federal law to do that. The only way back then, and I think still the only way, to make sure that the commonwealth government had a role in managing it was to get it World Heritage listed, that brought it within the purview of what was then the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act, which, under the constitution, meant that if a state was doing something that was in conflict with World Heritage values, the feds could step in and take action. That was what we had in mind.

When the Queensland government, some 20 years ago, started to talk about damming the rivers before they reached South Australia, growing cotton, growing rice, using chemicals which would then flow downstream into South Australia, the pastoral industry in the north-east of our state finally woke up, the penny dropped and they realised that the move they had been opposing for all those years was, in fact, in their best interests because the beef that is produced in that part of the state, they are keen to market it as rangeland wild beef that is completely uncontaminated with chemicals and comes from a completely unregulated catchment. They sort of got it after a while.

Unfortunately, as I have said, the path that the governments went down was a cooperative arrangement. That cooperative arrangement is now falling apart. I wanted to put that history on the record because I think I am one of very few people in this place who remembers it, who was involved in it and who can put some context to what is now a South Australian battle against Queensland to stop them behaving as ecological vandals in their section of the Lake Eyre Basin.

The final thing I want to do is to put the names of three people on the record. I mentioned the ecologist Julian Reid, who produced the 1993 report. I also want to pay special tribute to the late Jim Puckeridge, who was an aquatic ecologist who was taken from us far too soon. He made it his life's work. His PhD was studying these wetlands, especially the Coongie Lakes in South Australia. He was the one who drove the World Heritage campaign. He will be sorely missed, but his work lives on.

The other person I want to publicly acknowledge, who is still with us, is Marcus Beresford, who people may know as being involved with the National Trust these days, but he was the executive officer of the Conservation Council of South Australia for many years. It was Marcus Beresford, Jim Puckeridge and I who comprised the delegation that in 1990 tried to convince the rest of the world that we really did need to protect this globally significant ecosystem. With those words, the Greens are very happy to support this motion.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. R.P. Wortley.

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