Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Regardless of what members opposite are saying, Labor has made statements on water, and many of them. Most recently there was a policy statement on water from Mr Beazley regarding a 30 per cent water recycling target, which was made at the South Australian state ALP conference less than a couple of months ago.

Let us remember and focus for a minute on what was promised by this government in relation to this nationally, regionally and locally most significant and critical issue. This government gave its word that in the five-year period from June 2004 to June 2009 necessary steps would be taken to deliver an average of 500 gigalitres per year of additional flows to the River Murray system. This additional 500 gigalitres per year was to assist with the river’s general health and, hopefully, prevent the total destruction and loss of some of the Murray-Darling’s most precious and environmentally significant assets—six assets, in fact, spread through the system—and provide an ongoing opportunity for the renewal and continued health of those assets.

Within South Australia we have the collective asset of the Lower Lakes, the Murray Mouth and the Coorong—South Australia’s highly valued coastal waterway that is supposed to be an essential migratory bird habitat and has been central to the reproductive cycle of fish life for an aeon and a day. This asset was selected because of its unique ecological qualities, recognised both nationally and internationally, and because of its significance. It is a highly significant asset from the perspective of South Australians, culturally and recreationally, and the Prime Minister played on the value South Australians place on the area and its systems when, only days after committing to the 500-gigalitre target and time frame, he attended a Hindmarsh Liberal campaign function during the last election campaign and told the people of Adelaide:

... there is no issue long-term that is more important to many people in South Australia than to get the River Murray flowing again ...

…            …            …

... we are able to see the way ahead ... the day when the water will flow more freely again ...

That is what the Prime Minister said to the people of South Australia. But was he serious or was this just political spin in a desperate bid to save a very marginal coalition seat? I would say it was the latter.

I question whether the original target was in any way near satisfactory, whether 500 gigalitres on average for the entire system would actually provide what is necessary, even with scientifically rigorous economies of water use for environmental outcomes in place. It has been suggested that just the lower Murray itself needs as much as 700 gigalitres per year, let alone the rest of the system. It has been put quite strongly that the system as a whole needs three times what the federal government has settled on as its target—its minimal, almost tokenistic target. Nevertheless, the Howard government’s minimal and, one would think, easily reached target—compared with that of Labor—of 500 gigalitres per year is the target on which it has focused.

The government is now three years through its five-year time frame. It has consumed 60 per cent of the time it has made available to itself, so let us see where the government is up to. It fills me with great sorrow, as it does many other South Australians and in fact all Australians, that at this point the Howard government’s Living Murray, First Step initiative has delivered not one eye-dropper full of water to the River Murray—not one single drop; zilch, zero, nothing. The recent progress report sourced from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission on the Living Murray initiative has so many zeros on it that it looks more like an old binary computer card than a report on water delivery—a progress report on water delivery, no less.

I acknowledge that the states are in the process of doing what limited infrastructure projects they can and that have been assessed as viable and productive. In fact, they are currently in the process of implementing about half of what the Howard government promised and expects to be congratulated for—half a promise, which might have the political conviction of, and may amount to, just some idea about something that someone had.

Reaching the government’s 500-gigalitre target appears totally dependent on projects that are under investigation, the majority of which the Murray-Darling Basin Commission itself admits in its report will not be financially or logistically viable. So the fulfilment of the Prime Minister’s promise of 500 gigalitres is totally dependent on a pie-in-the-sky idea that will, in the Murray-Darling Basin Commission’s opinion, drop like the value of T2’s share issue.

Returning for a minute to what the Prime Minister told South Australians in my electorate in July 2004, he said, in addition to what I have already relayed this afternoon, ‘You deserve it and you’ve been delivered it.’ Yes, we in South Australia do deserve it, as all Australians deserve it, but we have been delivered it? Delivered what? We have not been delivered anything, not one single drop. As I said, we deserve it, yes—full marks for that; that is very nice of you to say—but we have been delivered absolutely nothing. We have been delivered a strong and improving scientific basis on which to make management decisions and install management infrastructure and systems, but we have been delivered that by the state government, not by the federal government.

From the federal government, it is a very different story. In February of this year the Prime Minister was no doubt all excited at playing the insurgent in vowing, as quoted in the Advertiser in February, ‘to put a bomb under the process’—a highly destructive image which one would think is not conducive to making positive gains. But I wonder how long the Prime Minister’s fuse is. It has thus far been burning for nearly 300 days since that statement was made in the Advertiser, and we have not yet seen or heard anything noteworthy—no riverbanks or weirs blown, no rain-producing pyrotechnics in the sky, no dirt propelling, no Ord River ditch digging, no shock waves rippling across the country—but we are still waiting for the big bang. The farmers are still waiting; the townspeople are still waiting; the entire state of South Australia is still waiting, poised, ears cocked, with attention focused on the almighty bang that may still come from any little ditch digger’s explosion.

While the Prime Minister himself can have a dangerously short fuse on demand, as seen in this place time and time again in response to the most serious and substantial of questions and representations, his explosion-generating device on this occasion, as stated in the Advertiser, is the one thing in the country that probably could be described as wet. It is regrettable that we have been delivered words only and not water.

And the Prime Minister has taken a leaf out of a former premier’s book, according to his response to a recent question put to him by the mover of this MPI, the member for Grayndler. Not content with directing words to my electorate, nor to the hundreds of thousands of people dependent on and with a substantial and ongoing interest in the River Murray, the Prime Minister has taken to including the Lord Almighty in his list of audiences. On 29 November in this place the member for Grayndler questioned the government’s clearly demonstrated lack of progress in meeting its own minimal target, and the Prime Minister answered: ‘I pray for rain every day.’ Good on him. We all pray for rain. I think that is highly commendable. Those of us who pray for rain pray every day and wish that we could see some rain. There is good reason for people throughout the nation to pray for rain, not just over their own catchment areas but throughout all regions that are trying to make a living under the most horrendous, hellish conditions that this country has perhaps ever seen.

We have seen water restrictions, entitlements suspended, animals being sold off, paddocks of crops left to die off and productive trees being left to fend for themselves—if they can, that is. Total water consumption dropped across the nation by some 14 per cent from 2000-01 to 2004-05, and this was before the worst excesses of the current worst drought of a thousand years. Water used for agricultural purposes in this period decreased by 23 per cent and water used for households by eight per cent, but water consumption in some sectors, such as mining and metal manufacturing, has increased in line with mining activities. This is according to the latest water account produced by the ABS. What kind of water deprivation, what kinds of stresses, what kinds of decreases in water consumption now apply? One can only imagine.

Whether we are thinking of the farmers on whom we rely for our personal sustenance and national exports, the communities that support the regions, the lives of people and animals or even the soil’s productivity, we can all take the most serious of droughts to the Almighty in prayer. But, as we know, while every prayer may be answered, the answer is not always in the affirmative. This in itself could be considered to be a substantial but overall narrow approach to our water problems.

The Prime Minister could do well not to just throw his hands up in the air as he did in response to the member for Grayndler’s question, suggesting that this problem is beyond him, that he has run out of ideas and that he has lost the initiative necessary to become the instrument used in answer to his own prayer—a very sad thing. The Murray is my state’s and many, many tens of thousands of other people’s lifeline. We cannot afford, we cannot sustain and we cannot countenance the government’s ongoing failures. (Time expired)

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