Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker, who has an intense interest in restoring the Murray River to being a healthy working river—as do a number of other members who sit in the government ranks and represent other communities. The Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council had its 40th, and arguably most productive and convivial, meeting last Friday. I thank my colleagues the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Campbell, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, for their constructive input.

It always helps when the Commonwealth, in conjunction with providing national leadership, brings a big swag of surplus funding to support programs, as we did. We brought the budget’s $500 million injection of funding—we injected $500 million, just to repeat the point—for the Murray-Darling Basin Commission’s work. That takes the funding for the Murray-Darling Basin work for the Living Murray to $1 billion, of which the Commonwealth is contributing $700 million. Seventy cents in every dollar spent on the Living Murray will be from the Commonwealth on behalf of taxpayers and river communities. That means that a number of infrastructure works will be sped up and a number will be able to meet their original deadline. The government will also allow up to $200 million of its contribution to the purchasing of water from on-farm efficiency savings by way of a tender system that the parliamentary secretary is working up now.

When you take into account the Commonwealth’s investment—again, on behalf of taxpayers—by way of the Natural Heritage Trust and the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, you are seeing billions of dollars being spent on the River Money—the River Murray.

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