Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Makin for that question. Ten years ago the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was signed into law. It was the most important piece of water policy that this country has ever made, and it still leads the world in terms of water policy. It may seem like a very strange time to be talking about water scarcity and drought, when we see the devastation that the Prime Minister was describing earlier in question time. Of course our thoughts are with those individuals and communities who have been affected by these massive floods, with lives lost and property destroyed. But one thing we know about Australia is that as sure as night follows day there will be another drought and we need to be ready for that when it happens.

The plan was constructed at a different time during the brutal millennium drought that made it necessary. It was the good work of the member for Watson that made that plan possible. A decade on I'm pleased to say that we have made real and meaningful progress when it comes to the Murray-Darling system. In the most recent drought, environmental water kept rivers flowing. It flooded wetlands and it gave hope to communities that saw dry river beds otherwise. In the south, the environmental flows helped flush 3.3 million tonnes of salt out through the mouth of the Murray and into the ocean. Without the plan we wouldn't have seen these results and that 2017 to 2019 drought would have been so much worse. But we have to acknowledge that this has been because of the genuine sacrifice of Murray-Darling Basin communities, and our thanks and acknowledgements have to go to those communities.

We still have a challenge. We need to deliver this plan in full. Those opposite have veered from sabotage to scare campaigns. That has been their only response to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. With 450 gigalitres of additional environmental water promised, two gigalitres were delivered by those opposite. 100 dams were promised by those opposite; two dams were delivered by those opposite.

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