Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure tonight to discuss the Water Amendment Bill 2015 and the implementation of the cap. In opposition, I was shadow minister for water and this was a key objective and a key promise that we made, and something that is vitally important to Australian agriculture not just in the Murray-Darling Basin but across our nation for its agricultural output.

We must note at the start that it is not just the Murray-Darling Basin Plan that has returned water to the river. A lot of people think that the only time water has ever been put back into the system has been under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, but that is not the case. During the Living Murray, $700 million was put aside and invested to recover 500 gigalitres of water. Water for Rivers, a joint initiative between the New South Wales, Victoria and Commonwealth governments, recovered 282 gigalitres—70 gigalitres for the Murray River and 212 gigalitres for the Snowy River and for environmental flows. There was the Loddon River sales deal and the water recovered as a consequence of the unbundling of prior water rights. The Northern Mallee Pipeline and the Wimmera Mallee Pipeline provided a mixture of regulated and unregulated water savings of 75 gigalitres.

What we had at the start of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan under the previous government was something that got very close to a riot in Australia. It was actually quite startling how out of control it became. They were even tempted to go into partnership with the Australian Greens. They were logical; they wanted about 6,000 gigs put back into the river. This would have brought destitution for any of the farming communities.

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