The Murray-Darling Basin Authority needs to go back to the drawing board, dump its report and start again. Last week was National Water Week and it is time to stand up for the plight of South Australia in our battle to secure a fair share of water entitlements from the River Murray.

 

I was recently in Renmark at South Australia’s first Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s information session listening to the concerns of our state’s food growers. Premier Mike Rann and Water Minister Paul Caica were noticeably absent.  So too was Karlene Maywald- comprehensively dumped by the people of the Riverland in the March election and subsequently appointed by the Rann Government to head the team charged with delivering South Australia’s response to the report.

 

At the information session, irrigators remarked to me that they felt abandoned by Premier Rann- a Premier who pledged to start listening to the community after the last election. This appears to be yet another promise he and his government have failed to fulfil.

 

South Australia’s food producing industry will be devastated if the recommendation of a 35 per cent cut in water allocations is implemented as is outlined in The Guide to the Proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan and it appears that Premier Rann is going to stand by and let this happen. 
 

 
The Rann Labor Government should have fought to ensure that South Australia is recognised and compensated for having implemented cutting edge watering and irrigation systems over the past 40 years. South Australian irrigators and food producers are world leaders in water management having enforced a cap on the state draw on the River Murray since 1971. No other state has done that. Our use of water technology is state of the art with pressurised and metered pipes, drippers, and sprinklers under canopies all part of the best water efficiency program in the nation.

 

Meanwhile, irrigators in the eastern states still use open drains and other archaic, wasteful and inefficient watering methods. Any Basin Plan must also recognise that the Federal Labor Government over the last three years has completely failed to spend the billions of dollars allocated to deliver water infrastructure upgrades in the eastern states.  Unlike these other states, cuts to South Australia’s entitlements cannot be offset by improving our water efficiency program- we are already so efficient there is not much more improvement to be achieved with current technology.

 

There will be far ranging social and economic devastation across the whole of SA if our food bowl regions along the River are destroyed by the proposed cuts to our water allocations. Not surprisingly, after nearly nine years in government, city-centric Labor still won’t stand up for South Australia on the national stage.

 

We need to fight to make sure that South Australia is given its fair share; instead this tired, disconnected Government cannot even be bothered to make the short trip to Renmark to listen to the people and hear firsthand what they have to say.

 

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority needs to scrap their report and start again- this time I hope they consider the hard work that South Australian irrigators have done to become the most water efficient farmers in the nation and world leaders in their field.