Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I am able to ignore the interjections, Mr Chairman, but I do find it extraordinary that those on the other side think that this stimulus package is a joke and think that this is an appropriate circumstance to joke about it. It really is extraordinary and demonstrates their lack of responsibility.

As I was saying, we share Senator Xenophon’s commitment to the Murray-Darling. We do not always agree with his ideas. It is the case that the government was of the view that the scale of bring-forward that was being proposed was not responsible. In the context of the water market we did have the view, and I have indicated this to Senator Xenophon, that that kind of bring-forward had the potential to substantially increase the price of water, thereby reducing the amount of entitlement we could take out of the basin, and would actually reduce the environmental outcome for the river. In other words, bringing forward too much money would in fact have a worse environmental outcome. We are pleased that Senator Xenophon took that on board and was prepared to compromise the demands that were included in the amendment from yesterday. We think this is a substantially better situation than was proposed in the amendment and we are pleased that we were able to achieve agreement. We will continue to negotiate with the crossbenches in relation to this policy.

I do want to acknowledge, because it has been raised, the contribution of Senator Siewert in the context of the discussions on the water bill. A number of senators in this place are prepared to have constructive discussions even if they may not always agree about the best way to implement the reforms in the Murray-Darling, which is an enormous problem. I hope we can continue to do that because it has suffered too long from too much politics.