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

It gives me great pleasure, as Leader of the National Party in the Senate, as somebody sitting in the chamber who lives in the basin, in Wodonga, and who was born in the Murray-Darling Basin, to speak on the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder Commission of Inquiry Bill 2026. I've watched, my entire political career, the impact of this Basin Plan on families, on food production, on the environment and on our future sustainability.

The minister stands up and talks a big game. This is the guy that had the great privilege of being the agriculture minister of this wonderful country, and he sells our agricultural industries and our regional communities down the river. If the Labor government thought they had a track record on agriculture food production and water policy, they would have the guts to run a candidate in the seat of Farrer—but they don't. They know that Albury, Griffith, Narrandera, Deni and everyone else in the seat of Farrer knows the Labor Party has turned their back on them and their families' future because they refuse to examine the rolling-out of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in a significant way.

The minister also fails to, in his contribution, recognise that the 450 gigalitres was never part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and was never part of the original agreement. It was a side deal done by Tony Burke to get it through, and taking the 450 gigalitres out of the basin was only to be done if you could prove there had been no social, economic or environmental damage. To a man and woman in the National Party, who represent and live in this community, we can take you, minister, any day of the week, to the communities that have been decimated as a result of this plan, from the agriculture industry screaming for responsibility about water to the many environmental sites that have been damaged by the way this environmental water holding is being used—the Barmah Choke screams it; the forest is literally dying because we are watering these trees too often for too long.

The very environmental outcomes you talk about aren't being achieved by the very base political approach to water policy that the Greens and the Labor Party pursue. It's all about the gigalitres. To anyone outside of the basin, it's giga-babble. But, if you say you're getting more gigalitres in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne or Brisbane, they think it must be a good thing. Well, it's not. More doesn't mean better, just like how more sugar isn't better for you or eating more fat isn't good for you. Taking more water out of the basin doesn't naturally mean you're going to have better environmental outcomes. We know that. We've done so many Senate inquiries over the last 10 years into this. We've had scientist after scientist come in and say the level of fish stocks is on the increase. We don't need to be talking about gigalitres of removal as the only way to assure river health, community health and industry health.

That's the great farce of the politics that is played with the basin and basin communities by all sides of politics that don't live in it. We're absolutely sick of it. The Victorian Farmers Federation today put out a release saying that new analysis shows the basin water buybacks are sending Victorian agriculture broke and backwards. That's information the Labor Party doesn't want to hear. The minister hasn't even the respect to read the bill before the Senate today. This isn't about holding a royal commission. This is about actually ensuring that we can look into this right now. We know the Prime Minister doesn't want to actually look into this. We know the Labor Party doesn't want to have a deep dive into the impacts of the rollout of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

As a responsible party of government, what we have put forward today, what the shadow minister for water, Michael McCormack, has developed in consultation with others, and which Senator Cadell brings before the Senate today is a bill that brings a commission of inquiry forward. It is time limited and targeted. It is something the Senate today could vote to support and that, from opposition, we could actually see implemented. It is something we could do, instead of waiting for the Labor Party to get their act together. The Labor Party, Anthony Albanese and their partners, the Greens, have made it very, very clear how they're going to pursue water policy for basin communities. They're not just coming to fulfill the gigalitres required under the plan itself, they're coming for the 450, which was never part of the plan. They're using water buybacks to get it. They don't care about the health of the river, they don't care about the health of our communities, and they do not care about the sustainability of our agriculture system. In government, we did fight hard to increase supply, fund better efficiency projects and embrace water policy that backed our regional communities and our farmers, who are key to the national prosperity of our country.

These are the people we send our kids to school with—the men and women who get up every day and do more with less. But they are at breaking point. The southern connected basin, in particular, has borne the brunt of state and federal government water policy—all in the name of saving South Australian seats in Adelaide. At what cost? The men and women who I have listened to personally, who have farmed this land for generations, are at breaking point. Having a government who arrogantly comes into this chamber and pretends that they give a shit—sorry, that's very unparliamentary; I withdraw. To pretend that they care—you don't. The great privilege of holding ministerial positions, of being the Prime Minister, is that you can make change. Instead, you've chosen to come after the 450 gig and decimate our communities with water buybacks.

The reason we want to see a commission of inquiry is that we think these communities deserve to have a say. They are absolutely over inquiry after inquiry. They have inquiry fatigue. They think that people genuinely are asking their view and expertise on how we can use water and how we can have a better approach to policy, yet what they see—they put submission in after submission, whether it is rice grows, whether it is the dairy industry, whether it is the horticulture and cropping industry or indeed the local councils and community groups.

When you look at what Narrandera, a town in New South Wales in a developed country like ours—this is their drinking water, Australia! This isn't from Africa. This isn't from some undeveloped country. That's from the basin community, and it is a direct result of a failure of water policy from this government—