Sharman Stone MP

 

PRESENTER:    Dr Sharman Stone, Good morning, welcome to the program.

 

STONE:            Thank you Joseph. Good morning to you.

 

PRESENTER:    Ok so we will come in and take control and fix the Murray. This is a man of action, PR puffery isn’t it?

 

STONE:            Well I think it’s a sign of frustration that all of us are feeling. Anyone who is trying at the moment to survive at the moment in the Murray Darling Basin as an irrigator, stock and domestic user, tourist operator, towns water supplier manager, you name it. We know there is total chaos in terms of the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA)right now.

 

If you looked at their forward draft of their Sustainable Diversion Limits Plans, which is incomprehensible I have to say, we have been told that the environment gets first crack of the water, then critical human need, then finally the irrigators in the future.

Well if you don’t have sustainable communities across all of the Murray Darling Basin, particularly the southern part, Joseph; if irrigation and farming communities have died through lack of secure water supply; then you don’t have anybody to manage the environment because the public sector has never been able to do that and never will.

 

PRESENTER:    But the irrigators don’t actually want this plan, they haven’t supported it.

 

STONE:            You mean the total control by the Feds?

 

PRESENTER:    The Federal Government take over as muted by Tony Abbott.

 

STONE:            Well what irrigators want is someone in control, who’s actually got skills, who’s got the authority, and what we have got now is the States still defying this MDBA. We’ve got the fight with South Australia trying to sue Victoria in the high court. We’ve got fights in Victoria over the cap. We’ve got Melbourne taking water out of the Basin and Geelong taking water out of the Murray Darling Basin. The whole thing is a dog’s dinner.

 

PRESENTER:    Alright but the whole thing hasn’t been resolved. Who’s to say that the Murray Darling Basin Authority isn’t going to work through those issues effectively in the final analysis?

 

STONE:            Well we certainly hope that they would take heed of the great concern that there is that we are not getting anywhere fast right now.

There’s just politics being played with this over and over again Joseph. When you have South Australia saying we have got to have more water, somehow there is magical stealing or removal of water up stream with no mention of the seven year drought.

 

Now this is our problem. We haven’t got people around the table any more from the states that have got a lot of experience in complex water management and it seems to me we still have one arm fighting off the left.

 

We need a central authority that’s got the good will, the authority and the expertise to take this whole Basin concept and shake it and say how does system operate best? How does it keep human communities in business? Because simply taking water from one point to another and saying ‘we’ve got some water to flush down the Murray; to hell with the human communities that live off that’. Two million people lose their livelihood, and you can’t manage an environment without people on the ground.

 

PRESENTER:    Ok but whoever runs the Murray Darling Basin isn’t going to create new water. So when Zuvele Leschen says extra water for South Australia must come from us. She’s right isn’t she?

 

STONE:            No,she is not. All of us should manage with less water, not just South Australia. All of us have got to manage with less water, because there is less rainfall and higher temperatures affecting the southern Murray Darling Basin.

 

We have got too look at out engineering infrastructures that are in the system, which have been there for many decades, you know, nearly 100 years in some cases. We’ve got to look at realistic expectations of people who are set up to use the system in wetter times and its ridiculous saying that one part must have more water when there isn’t extra water available in the whole system right now. It’s a matter of managing what we have got.

 

PRESENTER:    Ok just a quick question finally on this proposed 15,000 strong green army. How would that work, and how many local jobs would we get out of it for instance?

 

STONE:            Well our old Green Corp that we invented, you might remember it Joseph, was great value, and what Tony is proposing is a larger scale of that. But let me say the best green army we have got is farmers. Farmers and their children and the retired members of the rural communities; they do the best job when they are viable; when they are given a hand at what they know how to do best.

I say bring on the green army; but also don’t continue to drive our agribusiness out of business, or we are going to be getting our food from somewhere else.

 

PRESENTER:    Alright, Dr Sharman Stone, thank you very much for your time this morning.