Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

It was Mark Twain that likened the River Murray to America’s great river, the Mississippi, but a couple of years ago the Courier-Mail’s Mike O’Connor wrote:

Were Twain to see the Murray River today it is unlikely he would repeat the comparison, for the Murray and its sibling the Darling are dying, strangled by a combination of political apathy, cowardice and stupidity.

In 1999, Philip Coorey, when working for the Adelaide Advertiser, wrote of a leaked CSIRO report that said Adelaide’s water would be too salty to drink in two days out of five by 2020 unless there was a major shift in water management along the Murray-Darling river system. We are still waiting for that shift. That is why it is important that there is a process of reform.

The rains that we have had in the basin are incredibly welcome. They have given new life to the river system and new life to the Lower Lakes and the Coorong and to irrigators up and down the entire Murray-Darling Basin at large. We now have breathing space to get it right.

The process that the government has used has not been perfect but I think it is fair to say that both the government and the opposition—and the Liberal Party when they were in power—agreed to a process with the Water Act. There were amendments that were supported by the opposition in respect of the Water Act in 2008. I opposed those amendments. I believe I was the only member of this chamber that opposed the Water Bill, because I believed that unless we had a national takeover of the river system we would be left at square one. We will still have a case of state against state, irrigator against environment, region against region. And it does not need to be like that. The only way to solve that is to have, for one river system, one set of rules. Unless we have a national takeover we will continue to be hamstrung in the way the Murray-Darling Basin is administered and the way it is managed.

The issue of overallocation needs to be dealt with. One factor in overallocation is the managed investment schemes which have completely skewed the water market in many parts of the basin. Huge tax write-offs have been given to corporations by virtue of their managed investment scheme status, which has created more demand for water and put up unviable farming enterprises—those that family farmers and small corporate irrigators would not have entered into. By virtue of these tax minimisation schemes we have seen a terrible distortion of the water market and of agriculture in the basin.

I think it is fair to say that if the minister was involved in any way in interfering with the processes of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority he would have been castigated. He would have been politically crucified for interfering with that process. So I believe the minister did the right thing in letting the authority do what it was meant to do within the constraints of the Water Act. I do not think criticisms of the minister are fair in respect of that.

But I think it is fair to say that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority ought to have looked at issues of efficiency for those irrigators who were early adopters with respect to climate change and water efficiencies. It is interesting that in the lead-up to the federal election campaign the Prime Minister said that early adopters with respect to climate change ought to be rewarded for that. My argument is that early adopters with respect to water efficiency ought to be rewarded for that. In my home state of South Australia, in the Riverland, those irrigators had to be more water efficient because they are at the end of the river system, and they are not getting any credit or cannot fairly access the $5.8 billion that has been set aside for water efficiency projects.

I was in Renmark just a couple of Fridays ago for the community consultation with the authority. It is fair to say that that was a shemozzle. The hall—the meeting area—was too small. The audio system broke down. Those are things that I think the authority needs to take heed of, because the community consultation did not work because of that. I know the authority has worked tirelessly for this but it is important that we balance issues of food security with issues environmental flows. I draw to the attention of each of my colleagues here and of my colleagues in the other place page 113 of the guide. It makes reference to the fact that, as iconic as the Murray mouth is, it is more than that because it is essential to the environmental health of the entire basin for a range of reasons, including the export of salt and nutrients that will toxify the river system unless something is done. I also draw to my colleagues’ attention page 95 of the report, which is about the productiveness of various parts of the basin, where South Australia is by far the most productive part of the basin per hectare. These are matters that must be considered.