Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources on his letter to the South Australian Minister for Water and the River Murray on the issue of 450 gigalitres of environmental water that sits within the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It is on top of the 2,750 gigalitres that are set out within the plan as the allocation to be sent down the Murray River for the environment each and every year.

Quite simply, the letter points out the sheer impossibility of taking another 450 gigalitres of water away from productive agriculture and the communities reliant on that productive agriculture without causing significant social and economic damage. In the plan, it states that this water can only ever be sent down the Murray River if the net social and economic result is positive or no worse off. In Mr Joyce's letter, he points out the social and economic damage that has already taken place with the loss of so much water out of these communities and out of these irrigation systems.

The tirade of abuse from the South Australian water minister towards his Labor Party colleagues was quite unbelievable and, in my opinion, quite unforgivable. However, just as amazing as the tirade itself has been the number of Labor Party people, including the Premier, who have been falling over themselves to make apologies for the water minister from South Australia, saying it was simply 'robust discussion' and that he might have been under a little bit of stress.