Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water. After a decade of sabotage and delay, how is the Albanese Labor government protecting the Murray-Darling river system and every Australian who depends on it?

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for O'Connor, I have been crystal-clear about interjecting whilst ministers are approaching the dispatch box. You are now warned, and you know what happens with the first warning. There won't be any other after that.

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

I want to thank the member for Boothby for her question. I know how determined she is to see the full delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. That's what we promised before the election and that's what the legislation that I introduced into this place today will do. It will deliver on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full. I want to thank the state and territory ministers who have come to the table and made compromises and are working with us at the Commonwealth level to deliver on the plan.

The plan was meant to be completed by June next year. Instead of being completed by June next year, we're going to be around 750 gigalitres short of the full Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Of course, initial progress was very good and basin communities stepped up. They delivered around 2,100 gigalitres of the 3,200 gigalitres that the plan requires. But, more recently, we have seen a very different picture. More than 80 per cent of the water that has been delivered towards the plan has been done while Labor is in government, with only 16 per cent done under those opposite. In fact, when I became the water minister, just two gigalitres of the 450 gigalitres of additional environmental water had been delivered. Just two gigalitres out of 450 gigalitres had been delivered.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Nationals will cease interjecting.

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

Mr Speaker, I hear the interjections. The National Party like to say they were on track to deliver the plan. Well, on their rate of progress, we would get there around the year 3000!

We'd have robot dogs, bionic humans and the National Party water minister lugging the last buckets of water down to the Murray-Darling Basin. This plan delivers more time, more money, more options and more accountability. We are determined to see more water returned for the environment, more certainty for farmers, communities and the three million people who rely on this river system for their drinking water, more protection for our native plants and animals and more hope for this iconic river system.

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

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

It's very important to remember why we signed onto this plan in the first place—a plan, incidentally, which those opposite say they still support, despite these interjections we hear today. We did this coming out of the millennium drought because we know that the river system, if it continued in the way that it was going, was dying. (Time expired)