MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Senator Simon Birmingham, Coalition spokesperson on the Murray-Darling Basin and a South Australian Liberal Senator… Simon Birmingham, good morning.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Good morning, Matthew and all the crew you have in there this morning.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: Senator, what do we do to stop this descending into just an all-in mud wrestle?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Look, Matt, this is an important report for SA and I’ve fought as loud and as hard as anybody to see Murray-Darling reform and of course this was a process initiated by the Howard Government back in 2007 so we want to see the extra flows down the river but we have to get it right and we have to, as much as possible, make this a win-win outcome wherever possible, where we maintain agricultural production throughout the system and maintain those regional communities through more efficient use of water and making sure we get the water flows from the areas where they’re currently inefficient by upgrading their infrastructure and ensuring that we deliver environmental flows in ways that don’t ruin our productive capacity as a nation, hurt and destroy these regions and of course hurt our food production levels and I guess my main criticism of this is not with the Authority or the report, there’s plenty to question in there though, but my main criticism is that the Government, when it was released on Friday, had no complementary response.
The Authority’s job is to set the levels. The Government’s job, though, is to set the policy that determines how those levels will be achieved.
MATTHEW ABRAHAM: It would have to read the report first, wouldn’t it? I mean…
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well, I think what they need to do, though, is… the Government is talking a lot about consultation at present but it’s all about consultation on one side of this argument, which is what these levels of cuts are, rather than how we might be able to most efficiently achieve them. The Government needs to…
DAVID BEVAN: Do you think, on that core issue … that South Australian irrigators claim that they have been more efficient than anyone else in the country, that has not been recognised in this report… do you agree with that?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: David, I think there’s a valid argument there. Now I think we need to be careful as a state not to be too shrill in this regard. We do want the environmental flows, we do want to see this process work and South Australia is probably going to see some irrigation water loss…
DAVID BEVAN: Alright, Senator Simon Birmingham…
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: … but there is good reason there to argue that those irrigators have been very efficient over the years and some of that needs to be recognised.
DAVID BEVAN: Okay, thank you for your time…