Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I had not mentioned the word ‘hypocrisy’. Maybe I should just jump on that. I had not got to hypocrisy yet. Thank you, Minister. I was getting to that: the hypocrisy of the government in what it is doing by bringing this bill into the Senate and then allowing potentially 75,000 megalitres a year to be sucked out of the basin for Melbourne’s urban water use. I might add that Melbourne is allowing around 400 gigalitres of stormwater to run off into the ocean and is doing absolutely nothing about it. So while they are not doing all they can do to ensure their own sustainability, the minister is quite happy to support the taking of that water out of the Murray-Darling Basin. Perhaps I am misguided in my intent, but what we are trying to do with the Murray-Darling Basin is to make it sustainable for irrigators, farmers and the environment—right across the board—so that there is a balanced and fair share of water.

Having recently travelled from one end of the basin to the other, I have seen the enormous amount of work that irrigators and communities are doing to ensure that they do all that they can in terms of efficiency and sustainability. When they are going to those lengths to do all they can to make the basin sustainable, I can only agree with the overwhelming outcry from these communities right throughout the basin over the agreement to take 75,000 megalitres of water a year out of the basin. I would call on the minister to listen to those communities. I would say that, in her quieter moments, the minister probably agrees with me, given the amount of work she is doing to keep water in the basin. The government wants to allow that amount of water out of the basin each year when, as so many of the witnesses to the inquiry said, the basin is in crisis—they used various words. It seems absolutely—and I use the minister’s own word—hypocritical that the government should be doing that.