Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business (House)) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to indicate the opposition's support for the Water Amendment Bill 2018, which has been moved by the government. The purpose of this bill is to allow the government to bring forward again an instrument that was previously disallowed. When that instrument was disallowed, and Labor had supported the disallowance, I immediately came into the chamber and said that we were seeking to negotiate a series of issues with the government. I gave an immediate indication that if that negotiation ended up being successful then we were happy to revisit that disallowance motion.

In the normal course, the government would not be able to simply reissue that instrument. The Water Act 2007 doesn't allow it without going through a full, fresh process of consultation. Given that the negotiations ultimately were concluded in a positive way, Labor now stands ready to support this bill without amendment and to facilitate its passage through both houses. To that end, I'm not even moving a second reading amendment. This is something that is the product of a direct negotiation with the government and something that we therefore support in full, without compromise and without question.

I was listening to the speech from the member for Murray just before me. I do believe he has faithfully put forward views from his electorate. They are views that I certainly heard in a series of community meetings during the time that I was water minister, which were put with equal passion by members of his community and sometimes with language that was somewhat more forceful and, occasionally, using a series of adjectives that he referred to a previous water minister from a different state as having offered at different times. There's a reason why there's real passion on this issue. It's because the situation that Australia has found itself in, after 100 years of the Murray-Darling Basin being managed as though it were not connected, has meant there is no ideal solution for anyone or any interest up and down the basin. Every step forward has meant compromise. That is a reality of what is in front of us.

I've come in today with a copy of the Basin Plan. It was being quoted in the previous speech, and I said, 'Quick! Grab me a copy. I want to walk in with it.' If I were to write down my ideal solution for the Murray-Darling Basin, this would be not be it. If I put forward my ideal solution for how to deal with the Murray-Darling Basin, the simple answer is that we would have ended up without a plan, and we would have ended up without any national system to be able to get specific targets that we would work towards. This was not a document that I started with or that my department started with or even that the authority started with. We all remember the document that the authority started with. I'd been water minister for a couple of minutes, and the guide to the plan appeared, and I discovered that instantly I was being burnt in effigy all around the basin by different communities that had an understandably strong—

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