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

I acknowledge the interjection that's coming from the former leader of the National Party. Let me just say that part of the plan—and a fairly critical part of the plan—was that the water to be recovered would be recovered. It was pretty fundamental that the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder would be a holder of water.

In terms of the delivery of the plan, there are two sections on being able to acquire additional water. For the bit that's referred to as the bridging-the-gap target, we're now at 99 per cent. With respect to the additional 450-gigalitre target, when we came to office, of those 450 gigalitres, 24 gigalitres had been obtained. We've got that now to 225 gigalitres that have been obtained.

In fairness to those opposite, I put the former deputy prime minister who's in the chamber now in a different situation to others, because he did in fact vote against that 450 being included. He voted with the Greens to do so. He did cross the floor and took a position. He is consistent now with the position he took then, which is not consistent with the position he had in the middle. But at least on where he started and where he's ended up he is consistent.

The reality is that the work that is done by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, which will always be complex but is effectively the pathway of making sure that that water is used for the environment, is essential for the health of the basin. Yes, jobs are essential and communities are essential. There are no jobs and there are no communities on a dead river. We need to make sure that the health of the system is retained.

People understand the role of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. Anyone in those regions knows very well that any environmental watering event, the same as any flooding event, operates differently each time. It always operates differently each time. That's the nature of large volumes of water. Even though they are a very substantial holder of water within the basin in terms of irrigation licences, it is also the case that the work that needs to be done changes every year. The work that needs to be done will be different. You can conduct the same operation, whether it's to break up water with pulsating releases during a blackwater event or whether it's an overbank flow, and all of those events will operate differently on each occasion. The challenge, though, is to always ask: in the alternative, where would we be? In the alternative, we saw exactly what was happening. When the river system hits those critical moments, when the river system cracks, when the river system dries out because of overallocation without the proper use of environmental water, it's not just the environment that loses; it's the communities and the irrigators that lose. You end up with a system that cannot function.

If we were not in a circumstance where overallocation had occurred then we would not require the reform at all. But the reality is we had a river system which had been overallocated to death, and we had nine years where, effectively, acquiring additional water was brought to a halt. We now have a circumstance where additional oversight mechanisms were brought in during the course of the previous government. We supported those being introduced, we support them continuing and we also have support for the person who is in that role, who, as I say, is a former deputy premier of New South Wales, who held that role as a member of the National Party.

Murray-Darling reform will always be hard. It will always require maximum layers of consultation with the community. It will always involve making sure that you have adaptive management. That is part of how this is dealt with. But, essentially, those who now look back and want to imagine that the reform did not happen would be taking us backwards in a really substantial way.

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