David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in consideration of this, particularly around schedules 1 and 2 of this bill, which are the most egregious, the most damaging and the most traumatic to regional communities up and down the basin. They go to buybacks. The Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 tears at the very heart of the bipartisan support that was given to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in 2012, designed by the Labor Party, designed and accepted by both sides of the House. As hard as it was for us in regional and rural Australia, we accepted that something needed to be done. And we have done something. We have recovered over 2,100 gigalitres of the 2,750 gigalitres that are required to complete the plan, but we were doing that with common sense and we were doing that with infrastructure, being able to return that to the environment.

The minister interjects and says we weren't doing that. Well, I don't know where she was for a couple of years when COVID was on—

See this speech in context