Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

As the member should know, we have laid down a set of significant conditions to ensure that matters of national environmental significance are considered and that no derogation from water identified as going to environmental flows will happen as a result of this project. That is our responsibility, and we have exercised it diligently. I just add, through you, Mr Speaker, that this government is showing specific and particular commitments and recognising the seriousness of the issue in the Murray-Darling Basin. Only a number of days ago, we made a significant commitment to Toorale Station, which would provide waters coming back in to the river system from their allocations, and also to lands under the National Reserve System. The fact of the matter is that the opposition had some 12 years to take serious action in relation to water health in the Murray-Darling Basin; in the nine months that the Rudd Labor government have been here, we have been starting to deliver on bringing water health back into the system.

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