Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying, the government is confronting the problem of historic overallocation of water entitlements and decades of inaction by those opposite on this important issue. This is compounded by more than 10 years of drought and record low flows into river systems. Regrettably, there will be even less water in the future, as a result of climate change. Earlier this year, the Council of Australian Governments secured a historic agreement to undertake critical reform in the Murray-Darling Basin and to establish an independent national authority to manage the Murray-Darling in the national interest. The authority will deliver a basin-wide plan in 2011, with sustainable limits on the amount of water that can be taken from our rivers and groundwater systems. The basin plan, including the new sustainable diversion limit, will become binding on jurisdictions as their existing catchment level water plans expire. The agreement enabled the referral of powers to the Commonwealth, so that the new Murray-Darling Basin Authority could manage the basin as a whole, through a whole-of-basin plan. This is what Mr Turnbull said he wanted last year when he was Minister for Environment and Water Resources, but he did not deliver. In July, he said:

The principal problem with the Murray-Darling Basin has been that it’s never had a basin-wide plan. It’s never been run as one.

That is why we have introduced new legislation into the parliament to help secure the long-term future of the Murray-Darling Basin. The Water Amendment Bill 2008 introduces significant reforms to the governance arrangements of the basin, gives effect to the intergovernmental Agreement on Murray-Darling Basin reform and gives the Leader of the Opposition another chance to deliver on what he said he wanted—that is, a basin-wide plan.

The shadow minister for climate change, environment and urban water, the member for Flinders, said on 14 November, ‘We will not stand in the way of the water act.’ Even today, on Adelaide radio, the Leader of the Opposition said:

We are not going to throw the baby out with the bath water. I mean, the Water Amendment Bill will pass through the Senate.

That should be the end of the matter. Why, then, are coalition senators still planning to move amendments when the bill returns to the Senate tonight? It is just like carbon sinks of yesterday. The Leader of the Opposition seems unable to bring his troops into line—in this case, to bring his senators into line. The fact is that, if coalition senators persist with this approach, these crucial reforms will not proceed and we will have to go back to the drawing board to fix up the Murray. It is time for the opposition leader to take responsibility for passing the water bill tonight. If the opposition leader could not deliver on carbon sinks, with the future of the Murray at stake, it is time for him to pull his troops into line and deliver and see that this bill is passed.

While the opposition has been in chaos on water issues, the government has been getting on with the job of addressing our long-term water challenges. In the budget, we brought forward $400 million of funding from 2011-12 to accelerate action on the Murray-Darling. We are investing $3.1 billion to buy back water entitlements from willing sellers—

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