Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby and acknowledge the strong commitment the member for Boothby has to the health of the River Murray. I acknowledge the commitment of everyone on this side of the House, and a little bit over as well, to the health of the full Murray-Darling Basin, a system that had been overallocated to death.

This government, the Albanese Labor government, is committed to delivering the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and delivering it in full. The pathway to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is to make sure that there is water preserved for the environment. The overall plan as at the end of 2025—there are two areas at the moment where water had to be acquired. The first is with respect to what's called the bridging-the-gap target, and the government has now acquired 99 per cent of the water for the bridging-the-gap target. The additional environmental water, the additional 450 gigalitres—when we came to office, those opposite had acquired 24 gigalitres of the 450.

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