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

Yes, yes, yes. He used to say, 'The water falls on my land first, so I get it.' That was his perspective. But, state by state, the river system runs across the country, and what we had was, when it was viewed state by state, that the allocations were being done in a way that did not allow for the health of the system.

The perspective that was put forward by the Water Act was to be able to say, 'We need one of the irrigators within the system to effectively be someone who's job is to irrigate for the environment.' That's what the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder is—an acknowledgement that the system will never go back to being a fully natural system. The Murray itself has locks and dams the whole way through. The system will never flow as a completely natural system, but to be able to ensure its health we need one of the irrigators to be someone who is charged to be irrigating for the purposes of the environment, and that's what the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder is there to establish.

In terms of different forms of compliance and different forms of oversight that are there, there's significant parliamentary oversight which already occurs with respect to the Murray Darling Basin Authority. The Inspector General of Water Compliance is a really important role. It's a role which, for some of what is being here, I think is well-positioned to do a whole lot of the work that has been suggested in speeches so far. The Inspector General of Water Compliance is a position that I think those opposite should have some confidence in. It was originally proposed by the member for Maranoa when he was the minister for water. It was then implemented by Keith Pitt, first with the interim position in 2019 and then with the official position in 2020. The position itself is held by someone who I would have thought would have the confidence of those opposite. It's Troy Grant, who was a former National Party deputy premier for New South Wales.

There are different forms of compliance there. I think, in fairness, there is a view from some of those opposite that, notwithstanding that there was support for the plan at the time that I put it in, the bipartisan support for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan simply isn't there anymore. I think that's a reality.

See this speech in context