Paul Starick: Jay Weatherill’s upstream battle aims to float your vote

A HIGH-stakes water fight has erupted over the River Murray, ending a historic truce that was to restore 3200 billion litres in lifesaving flows for the ailing waterway.

• Eastern irrigators not complying with Murray-Darling Basin Plan
• Jay announces royal commission into Murray-Darling plan

A HIGH-stakes water fight has erupted over the River Murray, ending a historic truce that was to restore 3200 billion litres in lifesaving flows for the ailing waterway.

Premier Jay Weatherill’s royal commission into Murray water theft is an attempt to seize political advantage over revelations in July that NSW cotton farmers were illegally sucking water out of the system.

It also is a deliberately provocative rebuff to attempts, spearheaded by former deputy prime minister and water minister Barnaby Joyce, to retreat on the delivery of 450 billion litres to be recovered through water efficiency measures.

Mr Weatherill has one eye firmly fixed on the March 17 state election, trying to ­manoeuvre himself onto the right side of a fight to secure more water for the Murray.

The other eye is to the national agenda, aimed at sowing discord in the Coalition while Mr Joyce is fighting for his political life at a by-election next Saturday caused by his previous dual citizenship.

While the federal Liberals are likely to pay lip service to co-operating with the royal commission, its powers to compel interstate witnesses to give evidence are questionable, at best. Anyone called before a state royal commission would be able to resist it by raising legitimate constitutional objections, particularly if NSW bureaucrats are called on to give evidence.

There is a strong question about whether SA law has “extraterritorial application”, even if the interstate river link does provide so-called nexus, or connection between the law and the state.

The River Murray has long been a touchstone issue. South Australians have a proud ­history of fighting to save the river from the ravages of
over-extraction by upstream irrigators. There was political harmony at the time of the historic agreement in 2012 to restore 2750 billion litres of flows to the river by 2019
(SA later negotiated another 450 billion litres by 2024).

Even further back in 2003, the then premier, Mike Rann, hailed a $500 million plan to deliver extra flows as “the start of the fightback for the River Murray” and a “historic breakthrough”. It was a scheme that had been proposed by then prime minister, John Howard.

Times have changed, on both sides, amid an era of hyper­partisan politics. Mr Joyce, who almost certainly will be re-elected and re­installed as water minister, has upstream irrigators as his natural constituency and will represent their interests.

A royal commission is another attempt by Mr Weatherill to pick a fight with the Federal Government, part of his bid to conflate SA’s interests with Labor’s re-election.

He has extremely legitimate concerns about water theft, but this royal commission seems designed to have most impact at the ballot box.