SUGARLOAF PIPELINE

Parliamentary Speech – Urgency Debate in place of Question Time

ROB BROKENSHIRE MLC

26 November 2008

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (14:28): I move:

That the council at its rising adjourn until Thursday 27 November 2008 at 1pm.

I appreciate that this is an unusual gesture, but I could not overlook the urgent need for the parliament of South Australia to go in to bat for its people, and hopefully for the Premier and the state government to do the same.

As I have said, this is important and unusual. However, I advise members that it happened in this council in 2001, when the Leader of Government Business (Hon. Paul Holloway) moved a censure motion against the then treasurer. Late last night the commonwealth Senate passed an amendment by 33 votes to 20. Significantly, Senators Nick Xenophon and Sarah Hanson-Young (Greens) from South Australia, Senator Fielding (Family First) from Victoria and the federal coalition opposition were among the ayes.

The Senate amendment provided that no project that had begun, or would begin after 3 July 2008, would be permitted to be constructed by an infrastructure operator. The practical effect of this amendment, as the urgency motion states, is that it would spell the end to what is a controversial north-south pipeline—better known as the Sugarloaf pipeline—to supply water to metropolitan Melbourne via a pipeline inlet on the Goulburn River at Killingworth and an outlet at the Sugarloaf Reservoir, just west of Yarra Glen, which is part of the Melbourne metropolitan water supply system.

There has been great concern and debate about this matter in Victoria in relation to food producers. I am advised that, even in the city of Melbourne, while water restrictions and water problems have been an ongoing problem there—as they have been for Adelaide—a large number of people in Melbourne city itself are very concerned about this proposal. I must say that food producers in the Sunraysia area and other parts of Victoria—and certainly food producers to whom I have spoken along the length of the River Murray from Paringa through to the Lower Lakes—have been incredibly concerned about this proposal at a time when they are desperate for not only water for food production but also water for environmental flows.

Many of my colleagues in this council and in the other house have spoken about their concerns for the Lower Lakes. Indeed, just today the Minister for Water Security has announced some water flow increase to save the dying Lake Bonney. At the same time, the Victorian Sugarloaf proposal is estimated to cost $2.5 billion with a running cost of $40 million per annum—$2.5 billion for the infrastructure commitment to this project and $40 million per annum to run it. The Victorian Wonthaggi desalination plant is also proposed, at a cost of $3.1 billion with a running cost of $100 million per annum.

Family First in Victoria, through Senator Steve Fielding, has offered an alternative proposal to that of putting in the pipeline from Goulburn to Melbourne. That proposal is to use water that would normally flow out to sea in Bass Strait, which is enough to supply 35 times the whole of metropolitan Melbourne's water needs and three times the total demand of all Victoria for potable water. It would have a smaller carbon footprint than a desalination plant. Senator Fielding has also proposed a 30-kilometre tunnel from the Upper Yarra Dam to Lake Eildon, which is a significant reservoir, in order to allow water back into the River Murray via the Goulburn River. It would provide an opportunity to increase water flow from that part of Victoria to the Lower Lakes.

It is worth while having this debate. I believe that federal senators were putting forward those sorts of arguments when they moved the amendment to effectively stop the Sugarloaf pipeline. The Sugarloaf pipeline has the approval of the federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts (minister Garrett). In September minister Garrett approved the Sugarloaf pipeline from an environmental perspective, but one must wonder whether the minister had any regard to the environmental impact upon the Lower Lakes, the wetlands in Victoria and, of course, water flow through the whole of the lower River Murray system in South Australia.

The Big Brother approach of Victoria in my opinion puts at expense a lot of Australian families, arguably almost all South Australian families and certainly farming families and food producers living in the communities along the lower end of the River Murray, namely, from Paringa through to the Lower Lakes, and it also jeopardises the potential environmental recovery of the RAMSAR wetlands around Hindmarsh Island in the Lower Lakes.

What would a recurrent 75 gigalitres do if there was an alternative proposal? The argument from Premier Brumby in Victoria is that it would be water neutral, mainly because he was saying that, while 75 gigalitres would be going to Melbourne to supply householders there, with other initiatives they would be able to stop leakage, seepage and evaporation; and, with a more efficient technique, they are arguing that the water to Melbourne would possibly be neutral. Another argument is that, given that it is Australian taxpayers' money that is providing the $1 billion Victoria received through the COAG agreement, the 75 gigalitres could become part of the Living Murray water and come through to help to alleviate the desperate situation we see throughout the whole of South Australia along the River Murray, revitalise communities, revitalise and reinvigorate our economy and ensure we continue to see farming family food producers as we have known them in recent times being able to survive and prosper.

What would a recurrent 75 gigalitres do to the Living Murray? For starters, with the present state of the Lower Lakes, a recurrent 75 gigalitres would help to ensure that the RAMSAR protected wetlands would survive, and it would also be possible for Lake Bonney to get more than the 10 gigalitres that will now urgently be put back into Lake Bonney to prevent what I believe is a catastrophe happening, which has been highlighted by colleagues in this council, the Hon. Sandra Kanck for one, with the fish dying in the lake, etc. So, there are really good reasons for getting out there and fighting to stop the pipeline from Goulburn to Melbourne.

I remind colleagues that South Australia gets only 6.2 per cent of the whole Murray-Darling Basin system. This morning in public debate in the media on this, Professor Dean Jaensch highlighted the fact that there are problems with the handover bill. He confirmed what many of our colleagues raised in this council about it not having enough teeth and argued that there was not an absolute power of veto and absolute control when it came to the new independent authority. Whilst there has been some improvement with it, he stated—and I value his judgment—that the bill could have been much stronger. He also indicated, and many others have as well, that the only chance now to start to be serious about improving the river system would be for Prime Minister Rudd and his commonwealth government to support the amendment in the Senate and therefore ensure that the pipeline does not proceed. I think that is a pretty sound argument.

I want to give all my colleagues an opportunity to speak on this urgency motion, but I personally believe that this is a window of opportunity for the state government through the Premier to contact the Prime Minister this afternoon. We have seen other occasions when the Premier has got on the phone to the Prime Minister pretty quickly and advocated around certain issues, but I am told that, with the amendments, this bill will go into the House of Representatives this afternoon. If the Prime Minister really wanted to make a difference he could support that amendment and start to improve water flow and biosecurity and everything else that all of us really want to see happen in the River Murray system. At the end of the day, it gets back to the Premier in particular, as the leader of our state, to lobby very hard for the commonwealth government through the Prime Minister's leadership to stop this pipeline from proceeding and support the amendment.

The bottom line is that it gets back to our Premier showing absolute leadership. The South Australian community is screaming out for that. There is nothing more important on the mind of South Australians at the moment than water supply and water security and sustainability. I urge all honourable members in this chamber to support this urgency motion. Again, I want to put on the public record my congratulations to Senators Bernardi, Birmingham, Fisher, Sarah Hanson-Young, Nick Xenophon, Steve Fielding, and the senators in both the National Party and the Liberal Party federally, who made up the 33 to 20 in support of this amendment.

This is a very urgent matter, and I strongly urge members to support this motion. I trust that, if it is passed, the Premier will get on the phone this afternoon and call on the Prime Minister to support the amendment and help save the River Murray and give South Australia the chance it deserves.

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