Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Well, this is what an emboldened Nationals party looks like under the leadership of Mr Joyce. Here we have it. One of the very first acts of the Nationals, under Mr Joyce's leadership, was to vote, on Monday, against a motion calling on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to be delivered in full and on time. The whole agenda is laid bare, isn't it? For eight years, they have obstructed, delayed, told falsehoods, misled their own communities and misled people in this place about their intentions in relation to the plan. But here it is, in here now, a bald-faced statement: 'We do not intend to deliver it. We are not interested in delivering it. We are going to destroy the architecture that has been created to deal with the very real problems in the Murray-Darling Basin.' A healthy working river does meet the needs of the ecological communities—the birds, plants and animals that depend on this river system—and it meets the needs of the rural communities that live and farm in those regions and it meets the needs of the Australian economy, but that is not what is being proposed by these people. The National Party simply want to destroy the basin. They want to pretend we can go on overextracting it without limit. That is simply false. There is no science that will support that and there is no reasonable person who, looking at the state of the Murray-Darling Basin today, will support that either.

I indicate that Labor will move a second reading amendment in this place. I seek the advice of the Deputy President that I am in a position to do that at this point. I don't believe there are any other amendments before the chair.