Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

The department of agriculture has already acquired 2,075 gigalitres for the environment, leaving just 450 gigalitres to come from efficiency savings. Connected basin farmers do not have 450 gigalitres to give up and they do not need to. For thousands of years, the high-rainfall area known as the south-east sent a long-term average of 450 gigalitres of freshwater into the Coorong and Lower Lakes. Between 1864 and 2011, the South Australian government built a network of drains to take that water out into the great Southern Ocean, where it is destroying native seagrasses. This motion is demanding that water to fix the Coorong and Lower Lakes still come from other states, including Queensland. One Nation has a better idea. Turn the drains back around and use South Australia's own water to solve the many environmental issues affecting the Coorong and Lower Lakes. These are problems South Australia created for itself, and they have a simple solution.