Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to participate in this debate today as a senator from South Australia. Of course it is my home state that bears the brunt when politics gets in the way and upstream states decide that they would prefer to take more water out than allow water to run through the system as the environment requires. By the time you get down to South Australia, there is very little flow left.

For years we have been overallocating the river system over and over again—so much so that we got to a point in the last decade where more water was being taken out of the river than was going in through rainfall and run-off. It is outrageous for anybody to suggest that, despite everything that has happened—the negotiations that have happened in this place and the consultations with communities elsewhere—that we put a hold on reforming the river system.

We cannot keep going in this the way. We need to change business as usual. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is in place now. Even at this stage it is not at what the science suggested as a bare minimum. The politics of this place and the play-offs between the different states meant that the environment lost out at the end of those negotiations. It is time that we started to understand it.

We heard from Senator Day during question time that the climate is drying and we are heading into a drought period. Of course climate change means we need more water conservation for everybody. The ridiculous idea of trying to play with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan now—rather than increasing the amount of allocations that are going to be to the environment to keep it healthy for the future to ensure that our mighty Murray keeps flowing—and that the plan delivers too much is that it did not even take into consideration the impact of climate change. That is how foolish the politicians in this and the other place were when they struck a deal that cut out and blinded the Murray-Darling Basin Plan from even building into it—and accepting and understanding—a response to climate change.

We are already seeing the levels in the Lower Lakes in South Australia starting to drop. We are already hearing from communities along the lower stretches that salinity levels are rising again. We never got the full flush that we needed when the drought broke only three years ago anyway. Why? Because more water continues to be taken out, but we hear from the coalition, 'Let's just ensure that we prioritise everybody else but the environment.' It does not work like that. If you do not have a living river, nobody is able to use it. If you do not have a living river, you have got nothing left over—not just for now, not just for the medium term but for future generations.

I cringed at the idea of Minister Joyce being given responsibility for the Murray-Darling Basin. I cringed as a South Australian, because I remember what he said when it was the driest river in South Australia in decades. Do you know what he did? He came to Adelaide and said, 'Oh well, if you want more water, you should move upstream to where it is.'

I tell you what: I like Adelaide, thank you very much, Minister Joyce. I like it so much I will be staying in South Australia. I am not packing up, and neither are my South Australian colleagues, my community or my electorate going to pack up and move to Queensland, because you want to dictate as the minister who should get access to the water and who should not.

It is laughable that Minister Joyce is going to be responsible for dictating who gets access to water in the Murray-Darling Basin system and who does not, because we know he does not give a damn about those further downstream. We need to make sure we start protecting the river for the future.