Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kingston for the supplementary. One of the great things with the progress that has happened since this government came to office is that improvements for the environment have already commenced. This is not a plan where you wait until the final year before you have a situation where you can see the environmental improvements. The environmental improvements happened year on year as water is acquired. We already have, held by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, right now 1,000 gigalitres of water able to be used for environmental purposes. We have, in terms of water that is already contracted to come in line, more than 1½ thousand gigalitres of environmental water available. That means we are now approaching a situation where, as we get closer to whenever that next drought will be, we know beyond any doubt that because this government has been in power we have a situation where the system is in a more resilient state of health. The work that was done before me by Senator Wong when she was water minister and the work that we have continued—all work which the coalition used to believe in when the member for Wentworth was water minister—has actually created a situation where year on year the state of the health of the basin is improving. What we guaranteed through last week's announcement is that we will not stop on that journey until we can say that the Murray-Darling Basin has been restored to health.

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