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| Ian Gilfillan Australian Democrats Member of the Legislative Council |
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Legislative
Council |
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| Ian Gilfillan Australian Democrats Member of the Legislative Council |
Parliament Index |
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The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: The Deputy Premier, Minister for Primary Industries, Natural Resources and Regional Development has provided the following information:
1. The government's strategy for establishing salt-tolerant sustainable agriculture in South Australia is to be at the forefront of knowledge on options for the productive use and rehabilitation of saline land and water, and where feasible, to foster and accelerate the adoption of these technologies.
An example of our efforts to date in implementation is the joint public-private funded program `Salt to Success', which seeks to improve the utilisation of drained salt-affected land in the Upper South-East. The program focuses on retaining and improving remnant vegetation, agroforestry and salt tolerant pastures.
The government is also supporting a bid for a new cooperative research centre for the plant based management of dryland salinity. The CRC will have a major focus across southern Australia on new and improved pasture and woody perennial plants for salt affected areas. The government will also investigate the feasibility of forming a biosaline agriculture Centre based at the Waite Institute. This would pull together local scientists with expertise in plant science, soil science, groundwater hydrology and economics to develop better ways to utilise salt affected resources.
However, it must be clearly recognised that the government's primary goal for salinity management is to `reverse the trend' of rising salinity and thus prevent any further expansion in the area of salt affected land and salinisation of our water resources.
2. The government does not envisage a regulatory or compulsory strategy of taking large tracts of land out of production under its salinity management policies.
Importantly, in the case of salt affected land the aim is to get it back into production through the adoption of productive farming systems based on salt-tolerant or salt-avoiding plants.
In the case of land which is not affected by dryland salinity, but which is currently contributing significant recharge to groundwater and thus may be a cause of dryland salinity in low lying parts of catchments, the salinisation of water resources, and damage to environmental assets, the government will work with the affected communities to identify long-term alternative, higher-water-use, land management practices. Examples would include farm forestry, low rainfall plantation forestry, alley farming, lucerne and opportunity cropping. Importantly these alternatives must be financially attractive to landholders, either via the market or by subsidy, to facilitate their widespread adoption for recharge control.
The Draft SA River Murray Salinity Strategy (August 2000) proposes strategic revegetation initiatives in the 20 km strip along the River Murray to aid in the prevention of highly saline groundwater discharges into the river. Partnerships will be sought with land managers to achieve the desired changes in land use.
The Strategy also proposes that `all land managers will be accountable for the impacts of their future land management practices on salinity in the River Murray Valley'. If adopted this would restrict landholders from changing to land use practices that worsen the salinity problem.
3. Research, development and extension activities continue to seek to improve the water use efficiency of annual crops and pastures for both increased yield and salinity management benefits. Primary Industries and Resources SA's program `1 000 000 Hectares' (funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation) specifically tackles this issue in the cereal zone.
PIRSA also undertakes research and extension towards the introduction of deep-rooted perennial plants into annual cropping systems. Examples include alley farming with traditional crops interspersed with rows of oil mallees or fodder shrubs, farm forestry and phase farming with lucerne.
The CRC for Plant Based Management of Dryland Salinity will have a strong focus on developing new, profitable perennial systems for salinity management. These will be based on woody perennials for oils, wood, charcoal and food production and herbaceous perennials for fodder. The CRC will also address the long term possibility of perennial grain crops.
4. The national discussion paper published by AFFA (Dec 99) Managing Natural Resources for a Sustainable Future recognises that fundamental changes in land use will be required to sustain the long term productive capacity of many regions. These changes may include an emphasis on forestry, grazing perennial pastures, changed and innovative new production systems, revegetation, salt-tolerant plants and engineering solutions such as drainage. It further notes the importance of empowering regional communities so that can make their own informed choices on the most appropriate land uses to maximise their own social, economic and environmental goals.
South Australian policies of research and development and community support are clearly consistent with the national agenda.
5. The government has committed to `reversing the trend' of rising salinity in SA. Given the current state of play, containing salinity to the current area of affected land and the current damage to water and environmental resources is a substantial challenge that will require considerable new investment in infrastructure and land use change.
Even so, without a complete return to unproductive native vegetation, it is unlikely that groundwater balance could be fully restored in any area of South Australia, and in which case rural populations and rural economies would be equally impacted from the production income forgone.
More realistically, the government is striving to assist communities to identify and practice the optimum level of salinity management to maximise the social, economic and environmental benefits for their situation – the notion of the `Triple Bottom Line'. This will likely entail a higher level of prevention, but also a recognition that without complete revegetation that there is a need to live with a certain amount of salinity. Chosen solutions are likely to differ from catchment to catchment depending the hydrological processes at play and the value of the assets at risk to salinity.
The Coorong and Districts Local Action Plan is a nationally recognised example of community best practice in salinity management. Through a private-public partnership of shared investment from the National Heritage Trust, State Government, River Murray Water Catchment Management Board and landholders, the Plan aims to achieve a 50% reduction in recharge in the District. This will be sufficient to halt the further spread of salinity in the District and reduce its flooding and waterlogging problems. The recharge reduction target is being achieved through a focus on perennial plants including the retention of native vegetation, revegetation and dryland lucerne. Incentives are paid to landholders according to the net private cost and the public benefit that accrues from their on-ground works. This has seen a rapid uptake of the desired land use changes.
The NHT funded, `Catchments Back in Balance' Program delivered by PIRSA is providing the technical expertise to assist other catchment groups to develop and implement similar plans. Ideally in the foreseeable future, all parts of South Australia will be covered by a technically feasible and economically plausible salinity management plan.
