Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

Why don't you stand up and talk about the River Murray, Member for Barker. You've been deafening in your absolute silence on this. There are indications that the claims aired on Four Corners are but the tip of the iceberg. I believe that we can expect similar allegations to come to light across the basin.

The Nick Xenophon Team welcomes the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry, and my colleague Senator Xenophon has written to the inquiry requesting that they urgently investigate the allegations that inside information was given to lobbyists by the New South Wales government department, and why water enforcement investigations appear only to have been curtailed. The New South Wales ICAC is a welcome step, but it is a small step in comparison to the sheer scale of the allegations.

It all leads to one conclusion: the only way to resolve such shocking allegations of grand scale theft and major corruption is to launch a full judicial inquiry with the powers of a royal commission. Anything short of a full judicial inquiry is just an attempt to sweep these allegations under the rug, or perhaps to hope that they wash away. I put to the federal government, and, in particular, to the National Party: if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear from a judicial review. Yet all I hear, and all South Australia hears, and all the communities up and down the river hear is silence—deafening silence—particularly, disappointingly, from the South Australian federal members of the Liberal Party. They should stand up for their state and they should also call for a judicial review. We need to put our state above any party politics. I might say that the state Liberal Party is supporting this, and I commend them for that.

Before I conclude, I would like to say a few words on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. As a result of the Four Corners investigation, some have sought to criticise the plan and the planners rather than the alleged plotters. Let me be clear: the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is not perfect. No plan ever is perfect. But it is a good plan, and it is our plan. It is a shared plan born of compromise—the hallmark of a well-functioning democracy. It is our national plan, and we must stick to our national plan. The alternative is that our great River Murray-Darling system, which is already on a trajectory for a full-scale collapse, still has a possibility of running dry, and there will be no water for anyone. We cannot allow this to happen to our great nation.

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