Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

on the extractions from the Murray River that have been granted to them under licences issued by state governments. It is all very well for Senator Brown to sit on the sidelines and lecture us all without ever having the responsibility of government. Of course, the great responsibility of government is to balance the needs and wishes of diverse interests around the community. The fact with the Murray is that we have a situation where there is obviously a very strong environmental interest, but there is also the fact of 200 years of development that has been entirely dependent on extractions of water from the Murray River for irrigation.

At the end of the day, the only way that governments can deal with that is to buy back that water from those communities. If you deny them the water, the communities die and the industries that depend on it die. Commercial trading in water is a vital part of this. We have to have realistic pricing for water so that water is used on a commercial basis. We also have to provide the market in water so that governments have the opportunity—free of the conflict of interest inherent in owning the electricity company—to buy the waters so that they can be used for environmental flows. That is something that I personally believe is the future for this river system. That is why I strongly believe that the Australian government has to retain a very responsible approach to fiscal policy to ensure it has the fiscal capacity in the future to ensure that it can manage, on a commercial basis, the provision of environmental flows for those rivers—