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

I thank the member for Murray for bringing this issue of the Murray-Darling Basin plan to the attention of the parliament so that we can debate it in the format of a matter of public importance. A lot has been said in the presentation we just heard from the member for Murray that is factually untrue. It gives me an option for a particular style of delivery, but I do not think we do the communities affected any service at all, given the current angst, by continuing the debate in that form. So I would like to go through, very calmly, where we are at and the facts as affected by the issues raised in this MPI.

The words of the MPI itself refer to the failure of the government to undertake a balanced and properly informed process for the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin plan. The process that is going on at the moment is being driven entirely by legislation. Those elements of the process that are being conducted by the authority are being entirely driven by the legislation. While there are parts of the article by the member for Wentworth in today’s Sydney Morning Herald that I take issue with, I certainly do not take issue with this statement:

An elaborate program of consultation was mandated by the act, and that is the exercise the authority is now undertaking.

In the terms of the MPI that is in front of us, let us acknowledge that an authority is acting independently. In fact, what it is doing at the moment is actually an extra layer of consultation beyond that which it is specifically required to do by the act. I have been speaking privately to a number of members on each side of the House. Many individuals and families in the communities that we are talking about here have had very deep issues of anxiety for some time. By all means, where anxiety or an action from the government gives rise to legitimate debate in those terms, have the argument and have the debate. But, please, when it is simply a scare campaign—and in some of the language that was used in that speech—

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