Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

You can take that view if you want, but I might make my contribution to the Senate, because Labor has actually been talking about the Murray-Darling Basin for some time. I recall that at the last election we went with a commitment to restore 1,500 gigalitres to the river. As a South Australian, I am keenly aware of the need to restore the Murray to health. Those of us in Adelaide have a very direct understanding of the importance of that river system’s health to our families, to our homes and to the state economy, obviously.

This government has belatedly become aware of the importance of doing something major on water. We know that it announced on 25 January this $10 billion package. That is a good step. We are glad that the government wants to do something in relation to water, but it is indicated by the response to this report that as at December you were still saying that it was essentially business as usual. We can see this if we look at the preamble. We have a statement such as:

The Australian Government is committed to the efficient and effective management of Australia’s water resources, as its role in developing the National Water Initiative (NWI) and the Murray Darling Basin Agreement attests.

Implementation of the NWI will be overseen by the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council in line with detailed implementation plans to be developed by each State and Territory and the Australian Government and accredited by the National Water Commission.

Page 4 of the response goes on to say:

Under the NWI, State and Territory governments have agreed to planning frameworks that, once initiated, will be characterised by planning processes in which there is adequate opportunity for productive, environmental and other public benefit considerations to be identified ...

That is completely not the position now. Your announcement of 25 January completely superseded that, and that may well be appropriate. But we want to know, if you are saying that this has been in the pipeline for ages, why it is that Senator Minchin is unable to confirm when the costings were provided to his department. Why is it that in your announcement you cannot provide detailed costings, including the time line of the expenditure? Why is it that when the Treasurer is asked why he cannot provide detailed costings he comes up with—may I suggest an extremely lame excuse—‘We don’t know how much it will cost until the states sign up’?

The problem with that argument is that—as Senator Sherry interjected in question time today—if you know what the aggregate cost is, surely you know the bits that make up the aggregate. If you know that it is going to cost $10 billion, surely you know a bit about what makes up the $10 billion. But, no, the government just comes up with a figure; it is not able to say where it is going to be spent and how it is going to be spent nor the time line. We have the minister for finance unable to say when the Department of Finance and Administration actually obtained the costings and we have a report in December which is completely contrary—