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

I do so, Minister, on the basis that you can't cherrypick; you can't simply take one part of the royal commissioner's recommendations and say, 'That's what he said.' You have to look at the document in its entire context. Please—we can't cherrypick.

In the absence of following the royal commissioner's recommendations, or any other national or state commitments to implementing the commissioner's recommendations, that's precisely what we must do. Restoring the environmental health of our rivers, guaranteeing water security and food production, must be our national priority, not cotton exports. Consequently, Centre Alliance has moved to introduce legislation to ban cotton. Our aim is to open critical debate on the future of the cotton industry in the Murray-Darling Basin. Unsurprisingly, our initiative has been greeted with outrage. Long-serving Cotton Australia Chief Executive, Adam Kay, declared we are engaged in a dangerous and outrageous political attack. National Party politicians in New South Wales and Queensland denounced what they claim to be a South Australian assault on cotton producers. The list of critics includes the federal Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, David Littleproud; the New South Wales Minister for Primary Industries, Niall Blair; and the New South Wales MPs Mark Coulton, Austin Evans and Scot MacDonald. All this is unsurprising. They are, after all, lobbyists for the cotton industry.

Faced with an export ban, some cotton farmers would shift production to other irrigated crops. Overall, however, it can be anticipated that ending the cotton export market would result in significant reductions in demand on basin water resources. Of course, if basin governments were able to come together and agree on real reforms based on transparent science, as recommended by the royal commissioner, the cotton ban proposed in the bill that we'll introduce tomorrow would be unnecessary. In the absence of such action, the environmental degradation of the Murray-Darling Basin system will continue. It may well become Australia's equivalent of the Aral Sea, and calls for action, most likely focused on the industry, will most likely grow. Royal Commissioner Walker, like Surveyor-General Goyder 150 years ago, has offered good advice based on science that warns about pushing the environmental limits in a country characterised by drought and finite water resources. If we don't act, someone may well end up putting up another monument, perhaps the Bret Walker monument, this time near another South Australian town, Goolwa, saying, 'The Murray River once flowed to the sea near here.' That would be a great tragedy.