Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia (Senator Canavan) and the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to questions without notice asked by Senators Farrell, Chisholm, Moore and Sterle today.

You may recall, Deputy President, that I asked Minister Canavan a very simple question. I asked him: did he agree with the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Barnaby Joyce, that the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was impossible? When I did not get an answer to that, I took a point of order. When I took the point of order, regrettably, the President let the minister continue with his answer and we never found out the answer to that question. It was a very simple question, very straightforward, and it should have had a straightforward answer—yes or no. We never got an answer to it.

I can only conclude from the fact that we did not get a straight answer that it is the view of the minister that he agrees with Deputy Prime Minister Joyce that it is impossible to deliver on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. That is a terrible outcome, not only for the people in South Australia, where I come from, but for all Australians. It was one of the crowning achievements of the Gillard government that they got the Murray-Darling Basin Plan through the parliament—through the lower house and through the Senate—and it got with the cooperation of all of the states, because that is what was required to get the legislation through. That was a crowning achievement because of the years and years of drought that affected south-eastern Australia and the desperate state that we found the Murray-Darling Basin in when we came into government. Something needed to be done about it.

Of course, John Howard did attempt to do something about it. Senator Brandis will recall this. I know he has such a good relationship with former Prime Minister Howard.