Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just briefly, before I talk about the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, I might just endorse the comments of the member for Holt. What the member for Holt might not know is that, when I was fortunate to be responsible for mental health in the Howard government, I appointed Pat McGorry as the first head of headspace, the youth mental health initiative, because of his work with Orygen Youth Health. Of course, after he had finished with headspace, he went on to be Australian of the Year for his work on mental health. He is a great Australian, and it is an issue that we do need to take terribly seriously in this parliament.

The Murray-Darling Basin is an issue that I have been passionate about for all the period I have been in parliament. In 2001 I was one of the very first people to call for a national control of the Murray-Darling Basin. At the time, most political commentators and other politicians, even my own colleagues, said that there would never be national control of the Murray-Darling Basin and that I was flogging a dead horse, so to speak. However, it has to be said that 11, almost 12, years later there is universal support for the need for a national approach to the Murray-Darling Basin—a basin that covers four states. It has an enormous impact on our economy, on communities of people along the Murray and in the Murray-Darling Basin in general, on jobs and on the environment.

In June 2011, through the Australian Conservation Foundation, I and all other South Australian members of parliament signed a pledge which said:

Too much water has been taken out of the Murray-Darling for too long. The chronic overuse of water has dangerously degraded South Australia's Coorong and Lower Lakes and many other internationally important wetlands and made many communities suffer.

Strong leadership from Australia's political leaders can deliver a Murray-Darling Basin Plan that restores the environment, provides certainty for regional communities and creates jobs.

I pledge my support for a Murray-Darling Basin Plan that ends the overuse of water and returns enough flow to the Murray darling to restore its health.

I am happy to reiterate that pledge today in this parliament.

I say about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan that the Murray-Darling Authority has come up with that it is now the job of the current federal Labor government to get the state governments to agree to this Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It is not the job of the opposition to do that, but it is the job of Tony Burke, the minister for the environment, to do just that. The portents are not good. In my own state of South Australia, Premier Jay Wetherill is trying to show that he is not the weak reed that he has been accused of being in so many areas of policy by pretending that he is tough on the Murray-Darling Basin and South Australia's interests.

No one knows more about South Australia's interests than the farmers along the Murray in South Australia, from the border right through to the mouth of the Murray. I am pleased to have the member for Barker in the chamber tonight because he represents almost that entire area, along with the member for Mayo, Jamie Briggs. Both those members know the enormous contribution that irrigators along the Murray have made to investment in good irrigation, good management and good environmental outcomes for not just the last few years, not even the period of the Howard government, but right back to 1970 when South Australia signed the cap agreement on extractions from the Murray-Darling Basin. One of the great failures in the management of the Murray-Darling and the government's plan is that it does not reward and does not take into account the extraordinary investment that Riverland farmers and other farmers have made right along the Murray in South Australia over a period of over 40 years, where they have ensured that they are the best irrigators in the country. It would be a travesty if this plan did not reward the good investments and the good work, that has been done by South Australian irrigators for both the environment and the economy in my state.

When decisions are being made about investments, water-saving measures and infrastructure along the whole Murray-Darling Basin, it would be wrong if South Australians did not get the full measure of the reward that they should get for the investment that they have made. In planning their response, I hope they take that into account. (Time expired)