LAKE EYRE BASIN (INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT) BILL

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I rise to speak to the second reading of this bill. I am advised that the governments of Queensland and South Australia-and, I presume, the federal government-have been talking for some five years. We have now come to a very proud moment in our history: we are now going to legislate to keep on talking. That is what this bill does. It is not binding in any way. We are legislating to recognise an agreement which, at its very core, says that we will keep talking, but it is not binding in any real sense whatsoever.

Not a week goes past, in fact barely a day goes past, that we do not have the River Murray and the state of it brought to our attention. Here we have a system that we are attempting to manage after the horse has bolted. What frightens me even more is that, despite all the dire warnings of damage and despite the fact that at least the federal minister seems to have some understanding when he says that the flows must increase, even our state at the end of the River Murray has within the last week heard the Premier talking about the fact that, as we get efficiency gains, we will reallocate that water for further irrigation schemes. It seems that we keep chasing that holy dollar-chasing and chasing it-regardless of the long-term consequences.

The government to some extent can hide behind the problems of the Murray by saying that everything is created upstream, although the sort of behaviour I have described, where we continue trying to drag every last cubic centimetre of water out of the river from our allocation, demonstrates that we are very mealy mouthed. Regarding our record in terms of rivers, I invite members to look at the other rivers and streams in South Australia. What is the state of the Marne, the Broughton, the North Para, the Onkaparinga or the Inman Rivers? As we look at rivers right around South Australia, we see that they are all in deep trouble. They are dying or dead. We should look through the city, where our rivers for the most part have been turned into concrete drains. We are putting in catchment racks to catch the big lumps, but the little lumps are still getting through, and ducks are dying. People still cannot recreate on the Torrens, after our spending some $11 million of public money. I cannot remember in the past the death of ducks being recorded, and that is happening.

There is only one place in South Australia where streams are nearly in their natural condition-one place! That is the Lake Eyre catchment. There is a very limited, extremely small amount of agriculture taking place in Queensland. What got people panicking was a proposal for major cotton schemes up there of the sort we have already seen destroying the Darling and other systems. There is currently very little. One feature that worries me is that at the end of the day what we are agreeing to talk about is managing the river. Frankly, the river does not need managing at all. Every other river is being managed at the moment, albeit badly. They are being managed insofar as we are allowing huge numbers of dams, including farm dams-for the most part until recently unregulated. The only reason they are being regulated is that most of the streams have stopped flowing and extra dams have just cut off water from dams further downstream.

We have in the Lake Eyre catchment an unregulated system which in itself does not currently need regulation. There have been proposals around the Lake Eyre Basin to make it a world heritage area. There was no implication from that that current activities, particularly pastoral activities, would be under any threat, but people always further their political careers by creating panics of various sorts. Some people have set about furthering their careers by trying to create a panic around implications of world heritage agreements in the Lake Eyre Basin. The fact is that they were not any threat to the current activities. Certainly, they would have said that the expansion of irrigation in particular would be totally unacceptable. We are now setting up a system of management, although of a limited type. We are agreeing to talk to each other about management but there are no rules about management whatsoever. This legislation does not change that one iota.

It is very sad that we do not always recognise what we have. Tasmania has wild rivers, but we have wild rivers too. A wild river does not have to be a river running through a gorge, flowing over boulders and so on. The rivers up there are wild rivers and sometimes they flow strongly, but not in the same way as do rivers in Tasmania.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins interjecting:

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: They flow very strongly, yes. By their nature they look different. I was also a member of a committee, as was the Hon. Terry Roberts, that flew over Coopers Creek and the Warburton and Coongie Lakes only last week. There is still a lot of water lying around. The Warburton was not flowing, although most of it was full. That is an unusual state. Most of the time the rivers are empty, although the Coongie Lakes hold water almost all the time. That is the last place that would dry out. The Coongie Lakes are of international significant, being recognised under RAMSAR and other international agreements in relation to migratory birds.

It worries me that five years of talk has got us nothing. At the moment nobody's livelihood has been put at risk. I can understand how the rice growers of New South Wales are very twitchy about what might happen in the Murray-Darling Basin and about what agreements might be struck, but nobody's current activities are under threat. Some people want to get in and start plundering the system. Greed is a real motivator. But nobody is under threat. If we cannot strike a real agreement with real teeth, as distinct from what we have before the parliament at the moment, then we have no hope with the Murray, the Marne or any other systems. We may as well give up, pack up our bags and say we cannot handle it. It is an absolute national disgrace that we have not achieved real and substantial agreement in relation to the Lake Eyre Basin and it is a disgrace that the parliament should even be asked to spend time to pass a bill that provides that after five years of talking we will agree to keep on talking and does absolutely nothing else.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS secured the adjournment of the debate.