Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

There is quite a lot of water being bought by a company with no interest in agriculture. It is called SA Water, and it is the state government-owned water utility in South Australia. It buys water licences from mostly dairy farmers in the lower part of the Murray in order to augment Adelaide’s water supply. I do not know whether the member for Hindmarsh regards that as a bad thing, but perhaps he could put out a press release criticising SA Water and the Labor government of South Australia for doing that, if he disagrees with it; it is up to him.

In terms of a register, there is still discussion going on between the states and the Commonwealth, but I would anticipate that while water entitlements will be registered by the relevant states—and of course it will be a transfer on that state register that will constitute the transfer of title—our plan is to have one internet based register which, if you like, consolidates all of those state registers. So the honourable member could go to the internet and find out who owns what water and what types of water. He could find out what the reliability and security of the particular entitlements were in the different jurisdictions. So the answer is to have a basin-wide register, in effect, and with complete transparency.

See this speech in context