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

You support an independent authority which is charged with conducting consultation and charged with eventually bringing forward a proposal. But the final responsibility for the plan itself rests with me as minister and then, to survive, it has to survive disallowance in each house of the parliament, and therefore none of us in this chamber will avoid responsibility. No-one in this chamber should think they are going to be able to walk away from what needs to happen in the Murray-Darling Basin. Anybody is capable of being a wrecker and anybody is capable of doing what has been done for the last hundred years in the Murray-Darling Basin and saying, ‘Rather than address the reform we would rather just throw our hands up in the air and do nothing.’ The responsibility, once I sign that plan, rests with the parliament, and the bipartisan approach which has existed from the day the member for Wentworth first introduced this legislation will come back to the parliament in 2011 when the plan is introduced.

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