Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

What about John Howard? What a very good question there, Senator Hume. The Water Act 2007 was passed by the water minister at the time. Who was the water minister in 2007? Malcolm Turnbull was the water minister in 2007. He passed the Water Act—brought that into being—with John Howard and budgeted $10 billion to be able to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. He put into law the process that led to that plan.

Mr Burke, Ms Gillard and others followed through on the implementation of it, and I give them credit for it. I was proud—as a frontbencher in the opposition with the responsibility for water—to at times work with Mr Burke to make sure that the Water Act, which had been passed in a bipartisan spirit, saw the Murray-Darling Basin Plan delivered in a bipartisan spirit. In government, we are determined to make sure that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is implemented in full and on time—no ifs, no buts; full delivery.

I can assure this Senate that I will never, ever let anything get in the way of the successful implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It is essential to our home state. It is something that our government is deeply committed to delivering. It is something that the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, as the author of the Water Act—and the person who started the process of putting in place a comprehensive management plan for the Murray-Darling that, for the first time ever, actually analyses the Basin regardless of arbitrary state borders, which of course rivers don't recognise—is determined to see it fully implemented, and fully implemented it will be under a Turnbull government.

What we're seeing here today is a political stunt. You can tell it's a stunt, of course, when Senator Bernardi and Senator Hanson-Young pose for the cameras together. That's a pretty good sign that it's a stunt. Because of course it's an otherwise preposterous concept that those two would share a stage at any one point in time.