Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Water. I refer to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Will the government guarantee to acquire the additional 450 gigalitres of water through infrastructure investment?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question and note that he, like most, would understand the plan. It was actually written by him so, obviously, any of the concerns that lie in there would have been known by him. We want to make sure that we deliver for the plan. We deliver for the plan to the word and letter of the plan, and we are now also trying to delve into how we construct and retrieve that water. I hear some of the suggestions that have been brought up thus far, and some of them quite amaze me. They bring up the Menindee storage lakes, which we are already doing. They bring up the Barmah Choke, which we are already doing, which is already part of the assessment. They bring up the Yarrawonga levees, which we are already doing—so the 450, as he well knows, is part of the plan. But what would be better is if he came to the despatch box with some ideas about the problems that he actually created.