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

I would like to take this opportunity to speak about the Murray-Darling Basin—a subject of vital importance to South Australia and Australia generally. By way of introduction, I want to recall a cautionary tale from my state's history. Melrose is the oldest town in South Australia's Flinders Ranges. If you drive a bit north of the town, on the edge of the barren Willochra Plain, you can find a monument commemorating Goyder's Line of 1865.

For those who don't know the story, in 1865 South Australian Surveyor General, George Goyder, was asked by the South Australian government to map the boundary between districts suitable for agriculture and those prone to drought. After travelling some 3,200 kilometres on horseback, Goyder produced a report and a map with a line of demarcation between the northern areas he judged liable to drought and suitable only for grazing and areas to the south suitable for wheat and other crops. Goyder's approach was carefully scientific, including close observations of changes in vegetation, especially the prevalence of various types of saltbush.

On the basis of Goyder's line, the South Australian government initially discouraged agricultural settlement in the state's north. However, a few good seasons of rain fuelled political pressure to open new areas for settlement and farmers were allowed to move north, planting wheat in anticipation of more good seasons. Early crops were good, but a few years later the rain reverted to its normal pattern. Severe drought forced the abandonment of hundreds of farms. Farmers and their families faced great hardship and were forced to retreat, leaving ruins scattered across the Willochra Plain and elsewhere in South Australia's north.

The story of Goyder's Line has been told to successive generations of South Australian school students as a lesson about the realities of climate change and the dangers of pushing the environmental envelope in the hope of profit. More than 150 years after Goyder drew his line, Royal Commissioner Bret Walker has delivered another salutary warning about Australia's environment and the dangers of narrow commercial interest prevailing over environmental realities. Over more than 700 pages of his report, Commissioner Walker has drawn up a scathing indictment of maladministration, unlawful action and political interference in the management of the water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin.

The royal commissioner found that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has ignored the potentially catastrophic risk of climate change. Good science has been pushed aside by narrow self-interests, both political and economic. The royal commissioner has condemned the so-called triple bottom line approach through which the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and basin governments have weighed economic and social factors to radically reduce water recovery for the environment. Not only has this process lacked transparent scientific foundation; it is at odds with the Commonwealth Water Act 2007, which requires that the basin's water resources be managed in the national interest and, among other things, protect, restore and provide for the Murray-Darling ecosystem. I emphasise the word 'restore' because, when this parliament passed the Water Act, it legislated that the Murray-Darling system had to be restored, not merely maintained in an environmentally degraded status quo. Commissioner Walker has recommended a complete overhaul of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Large-scale water buybacks and a consequent reduction in irrigation, especially in the northern basin, are essential to restoring the river system. Of course, during the summer we've all seen the appalling fish kills on the lower Darling River.

Against a background of obvious environmental crisis, a crisis in which communities have been unable to access safe drinking water, one might have thought the royal commissioner's report would receive a positive response or at least trigger constructive debate about water management reform. Regrettably, the New South Wales and Queensland governments have effectively rejected the report and its recommendations out of hand. The Australian government appears indifferent, while the South Australian government's response has been low key to the point of timidity. We have a merry-go-round of blame shifting, taking the Murray-Darling Basin absolutely nowhere.

In these circumstances it is, regrettably, necessary to open debate on other, unpalatable measures to protect and restore the environmental health of the Murray-Darling. In this, the role of cotton cannot be ignored. The overwhelming majority, 98 per cent, of cotton is grown in the Murray-Darling Basin, with some 90 per cent exported, mainly to China and India. This is a large and successful industry but one that imposes a major drain on the—