Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Fawcett for his question and his passionate advocacy of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, that provides certainty and security to the people of South Australia and to all river communities. Having a credible plan guarantees sustainability for the environment, for the economy and for the communities of the river system. Yesterday, sadly, we saw recklessness in relation to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in this Senate, and the destruction of bipartisanship that had underpinned progress since the Water Act was passed in 2007 and underpinned agreement and progress in 2012, when the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was agreed to. Tragically, that means that at risk is certainty for our home state and for all river communities about the guarantee that we will have the water to sustain our river systems, the water to sustain the economies of our communities and the water to sustain the society of those river towns.

What is at risk is an extra 3,200 gigalitres of equivalent environmental flows throughout the river system. By putting that at risk—and that is what everybody opposite did last night—they do put at risk the health of the Murray mouth, the health of the Lower Lakes, the health of native birds and species, the health of irrigation communities, the health of river communities and the health of the populations who live up and down the Murray-Darling Basin.

For 118 years this country has argued over water, and who should be responsible for it and how it should be managed. It was a great breakthrough when the Basin Plan was adopted and it has been sustained and underpinned by bipartisanship. It will only work in the future with bipartisanship and with, as Senator Ruston has rightly said, all sides stopping pointing guns at each other's heads and instead coming back to the table to work through a solution.