Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I thank you, Senator Faruqi, for that consideration. I seek leave to move a motion.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in my name, as leader of the National Party, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to the reinstatement of the cross-portfolio hearing into the Murray-Darling Basin Plan matters.

Here we stand again. The Labor Party is using their numbers, in partnership with the Greens political party, to diminish the Australian Senate, to diminish Senate estimates, one of the key components of our ability as a parliament and as a people to hold whoever's in government to account.

I heard the Manager of Government Business in the Senate, in her contribution to Senator Cash, say: 'Well, it's alright. Steady on. We've got December estimates, everyone. You'll get your chance.' Well, the reality is that that once again shows that the Labor Party don't understand regional Australia, have no idea about water policy and, indeed, fundamentally want to avoid scrutiny of how they've handled the water portfolio in their time in government.

The reason that we have cross-portfolio days is that opposition senators and crossbench senators go to the environment department, the health department, the Treasury department and the finance department and ask their questions, and they're told: 'We don't deal with that. You'll have to go over here or you'll have to go over there.' The reason we had cross-portfolio is that those senators that are interested in the sustainability of the Murray-Darling Basin, its river systems, its communities and the industries that underpin the economics of the Murray-Darling Basin were able to ensure relevant scrutiny.

Over 2½ million people live in the Murray-Darling Basin. Since the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been in place, we've seen industry decimated and negative environmental impacts. In my own home state of Victoria, rushing flow through particularly the Barmah Choke has seen bank degradation and trees dying en masse because we're more interested in the number of gigalitres that go down the Murray than we are in assessing environmental impact. What we now know, a decade after the plan, is that if we put less water down, more slowly, we would get better environmental impacts. But the Labor Party and the Greens don't care about the environmental, social or economic impacts of their water policy, because it's a bit like their approach to the live sheep trade in Western Australia: it's all about winning votes for Sarah Hanson-Young in Adelaide, for NSW and Victorian senators in Melbourne and Sydney and for Tanya Plibersek and others to hold inner-city seats in Sydney. That is the reality of the Labor and the Greens' approach to the Murray-Darling Basin.

That one day of cross-portfolio allowed us to not only get questions on why you're pursuing buy-backs from unwilling sellers—I like how you call them 'willing sellers' when they are broke because of the Labor party's policies. Why are you pursuing buy-backs when farmers have told you they don't want them, when in my own state of Victoria your own Labor ministers are saying we don't support federal Labor's approach?

What we've seen in the last 10 years is you've gone to where the secure water entitlements are—they are in the highly managed state of Victoria—and you've purchased our water. You've created a swiss-cheese effect right throughout dairy and country, in particular in central-north Victoria, and we have now seen manufacturing jobs in the dairy industry at risk because the litreage in our dairy farms of northern Victoria are dropping. Why? It's not because we don't know how to farm, not because farmers aren't able to innovate and not because we're in severe drought or floods; it's because of the federal Labor Party's water policy.

If you've got your own Labor Party ministers in Victoria saying, 'You are going down the wrong track,' our responsibility as crossbenchers and as opposition senators is to hold the government to account for their policy decisions, to hold the Murray-Darling Basin Authority—this unelected agency, whose own decisions fly in the face of good social, economic and environment policy—to account. Shame on the Labor Party for cancelling— (Time expired)