Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak in favour of this motion. One of the things that we lack in this chamber is the use of measurements; in particular, numbers. When it comes to the Lower Lakes, I think we need to look at some facts and figures to put things into context. I'd like to thank the stakeholders who gave me these numbers last week, because when you hear these figures you'll actually understand how unproductive and insane the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is.

The surface area of the Lower Lakes is 200,000 acres. That is a massive property. I come from a large property about 150,000 acres in Western Queensland. I know how big that is, and to think that that is the size of the surface area of the Lower Lakes. They hold 1,924 gigalitres of water, and approximately half of it evaporates every year, so in the Lower Lakes we are losing about 865 gigalitres every year to evaporation.

But here's the thing: there are only 166 licence holders in that lower basin—the lower part of the Murray River in southern South Australia, not in northern South Australian near Renmark—and they use only 21 gigalitres. We let 865 gigalitres go to the Lower Lakes and evaporate every year so that a small number of farmers can use 21 gigalitres. That is completely insane. If you really want to fix this problem and get to keep more water in the Upper Murray and the Upper Darling, you're much better off building a lock at the top of the lake—a much deeper lock that can hold quite a bit water, with a much smaller surface area—that can be used for irrigation. You keep the fresh water apart from the salt water and you get rid of those lower barrages.

The other thing that I found out last week from these stakeholders, who were from around the Goulburn area, is that now, because of these so-called environmental flows, there is flooding in certain parts of the river in seven or eight of every 10 years. Normally, in Australia you get flooding, as we all know, a couple of times a decade. We are now getting constant flooding, almost every year, and of course that is destroying some of the surface area and the gum trees in the Murray-Darling Basin. I'm all for the idea of environmental flows, but you don't want these environmental flows actually destroying the environment.

There seems to be a bit of deja vu with the climate change thing. Everyone said, 'We need to get away from coal-fired power stations, so let's build renewables,' and renewables are destroying the environment. It looks like we are finding out now that these so-called environmental flows that come down the river just about every year, when they don't normally come down the river every year, are actually destroying part of the Murray and Goulburn. We need to have a much closer look at this.

I do support the motion. It's a very good idea, because we do not want our farmers going broke and closing down. The stakeholders I spoke to last week were indeed dairy farmers and other farmers on the basin who had lost their livelihoods.