Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

This is a large and successful industry but one that imposes a major drain on the resources of the Murray-Darling Basin. I could go through the Australian Bureau of Statistics' figures on water use, but I will just state that, on average, cotton takes more than 20 per cent of the irrigation allocation in the Murray-Darling Basin. Noting that cotton is a water-intensive crop, we are effectively exporting 20 per cent of our river, something that makes no sense for the driest inhabited continent on the planet. The royal commissioner does not single out cotton—