Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mayo for the question. As the member for Mayo’s question acknowledges, we are talking about reforms that began under the Howard government, and I am very pleased to hear that being acknowledged. The level of bipartisanship sometimes gets forgotten in moments in here but on water it has been there.

The $5.8 billion that was referred to refers beyond the on-farm irrigation to actual centralised irrigation infrastructure—that is the $5.8 billion that was referred to in the question. Those applications have come in from the states and there is a process of due diligence that the department quite properly is going through in making the assessment on those individual state applications for that money. If there is a call for the due diligence not to occur, I would be surprised by that. It is a large amount of money and the due diligence work that is going on is appropriate.

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