Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

Whilst I acknowledge the member for Indi's amendment, which is effectively about how we fly the white flag for compensation in regional communities, I can't support it. But I do acknowledge that she has conceded in this place—and I would hope others would listen to her—that water buybacks occasion socioeconomic harm. The water minister in South Australia doesn't accept that premise, which is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

Way back when this agreement was negotiated, it was Craig Knowles who said: 'What we really need is a healthy working river.' I'm not here to fly the white flag. I'm here to ensure we have a healthy working river. Don't take my word for it. Ben Haslett is a premium citrus producer in my electorate. At a recent forum he said: 'You know what I think we're headed towards? We might end up with a healthy river, but it's not going to work anymore, and that's a big deal for us.' Ben is at the coalface, and in my world he's an expert. Let's go to the experts.

Aither published a report in 2020. That report was commissioned by the Victorian Labor government. There's no suggestion that this is a centre-right whitewash. It was the Victorian Labor government. What does this report say? This report says that, if you take an additional 500 gigalitres of water out of the basin, 'there's no horticultural product that will be viable'. Let's be clear here: people think you can remove water and the remaining water will sustain the economy of the basin. When you remove this water from the consumptive pool and you put it in the environmental pool—and I'll come back to that—you drive up the cost of temporary water, and, by driving up the cost of temporary water, various commodity groups in the basin can't remain sustainable. Almond, citrus, dairy—I don't need to list them.

We're doing this at a point in time when the red wine industry is literally on its knees. There are three billion litres of wine around the world that have no home. We consume less than that globally in a year. These people are desperate. The minister opposite will say, 'But these are willing sellers.' Well, these are the kind of willing sellers you get when you're absolutely on your knees. Let's just remember that this isn't a debate about 500 gigalitres; this is a debate about Australian horticulture in the basin, full stop. That's not the member for Barker saying that in some highfalutin, overreaching speech; these are world experts on water economics: Aither.

So what are we doing this for? We're doing it to recover more water for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. Some in this place might be interested to learn that in the last 10 years, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has not used all of its allocation at any point in the last 10 years. In fact, in one particular year, it carried over a thousand gigalitres. Right now what we're saying is we've got to give more water to the environment at the cost of my constituents, my growers—and, by the way, the Riverland population shrunk by 30 per cent last time we did this—to give yet more water to the environmental water user, who haven't yet used their full allocation to this point in any one particular year. You can understand why the environmentalists in my electorate, the 75-year-olds who are going to Ramsar listed sites to plant trees and to dig trenches to get water to the red gums, throw their hands up in despair.

By the way, the farmers don't live next to the Ramsar listed wet sites. Nobody visits them. Certainly the department from Canberra doesn't. I can assure you of that much. So, Friends, let's not fly the white flag. Just to be clear, in my electorate alone, SA's contribution to this target, 32 gigs, is likely to be 5,000 hectares of mandarins and $200 million a year in production gone. That's year on year; that's this year, next year and the year after. Do you know what those opposite are saying? 'She will be right. We'll chuck you $20 million in compensation as a one off. It's all good.' I tell you what: I'm not here to fly the white flag. The people of Barker didn't send me to fly the white flag, and not all South Australians support this approach.

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