Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to 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—

David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator, the time for your contribution has expired.

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

Mr Acting Deputy President, I was down for ten minutes, not five. We're in the 10-minute session.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Disability and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The clock wasn't restarted.

David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It wasn't reset.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We get the gist of what you're saying. It's okay.

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

Thank you, Minister, for your assistance here. Do you mind if I continue?

David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Carry on, Senator Patrick.

Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to 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—

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, but you do.

Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to 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.