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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-03-20 Daily Xml
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Water Buybacks

The Hon. S.L. GAME (17:13): I move:

That this council—

1. Acknowledges that South Australian irrigators have given up enough high-security water for the environment; and

2. Acknowledges that any further water buybacks by the commonwealth government will have a negative economic and social impact on basin communities in South Australia.

Labor's deal with the commonwealth, known as Bridging the Gap water recovery, has thrown rural and regional areas in South Australia under the bus and will add to the cost-of-living crisis as the price of fresh vegetables and fruit skyrockets. The deal, done in August 2023, means water typically used in farming will stay in the Murray River and then flow out to sea. If the Labor government cared for the environment as they say they do then they would lower the level of immigration into Australia instead of taking water away from food and fibre production.

The Bridging the Gap water recovery target of 183.8 gigalitres a year, or 183.8 billion litres of freshwater, represents close to 50 per cent of all South Australian River Murray class 3 water remaining for irrigation. We know from previous water buybacks the socio-economic impacts of this deal will be grave. As farming declines, so too will the rural and regional population decline. As the population declines so, too, will services and resources for people in rural and regional areas of South Australia.

Schools will close, banks will close, doctors will move away, irrigation supply businesses will shed staff, suicides will increase and the death cycle will turn again—a death cycle created by a city-centric Labor government. No other conclusion can be drawn from the decision to use taxpayer-funded buybacks to take even more productive water and basin properties out of use in the name of environmental flows.

Our state government's water minister, Dr Susan Close, seems to have a tin ear to the concerns of irrigators and industry figures in places like the Riverland, where the spectre of another round of water buybacks has an already struggling community, still recovering from the 2022-23 flood, fearful of what lies ahead. The minister and her federal counterpart are careful to say that water will only be purchased from willing sellers, but given the circumstances of many irrigators across different crop types we all know this is not true. Water will in fact be purchased from desperate sellers, and who can blame them for wanting to exit their respective industries for a handsome payout, given the current struggle of supply and demand, falling prices paid to them and skyrocketing input costs, like electricity.

The reports from locals on the ground in the Riverland are overwhelming. Buybacks will take irrigated properties out of production and create additional economic and social problems. We saw this the first time around when properties were mothballed and basin economies took a hit, despite claims to the contrary made in the final report of SA's somewhat insular royal commission.

In defending the return to buybacks, Minister Close describes any suggestion, however well-credentialled the source, that buybacks adversely impact communities as a myth. Why then did she reveal in the same media release no less that the Albanese government has set aside $20 million for South Australia to deal with any legitimate impacts on communities? Why would money be set aside for something we are assured will not happen? A while ago I saw a farmer in northwest Victoria, who refused to sign up to the new deal, speaking about the likely impact of buybacks, asking whether people realised what they would mean. In short, it will mean less Australian fruit, vegetable, nut and fibre production and less production of grapes from our winegrowing engine room.

It has been estimated that up to 100,000 hectares of horticultural production effectively could be shelved. Even federal water minister Tanya Plibersek conceded that there will in fact be social and economic impacts, pledging to minimise them. If everyone else can see what buybacks mean, why cannot our own South Australian water minister? The actions of the Labor government show they do not understand about people living and working in rural and regional South Australia.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

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