Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we've gone through this, we've seen that it's quite obvious that the people who talk against this bill talk from a position of passion. The people who talk for it, talk from a position of the PMO's talking points.

What is quite clear is that we do actually believe in one position of the Labor Party, and that was the member for Watson's, Anthony Stephen Burke's, position, because it's his legislation that we're actually amending here. So the member for Watson's legislation has been thrown down and out the window by the member for Sydney's, Tanya Joan Plibersek's, version of how she wants to see the Murray-Darling Basin.

Now, it's interesting, isn't it, that we have a view of the basin from people who don't live in the basin. That view about the preciousness of water seems to conflict with what we'd probably see in their houses, where you'd have multiple toilets, multiple showers, multiple water features. We'd even have showers that had two showerheads, so, as you're having a shower, you can share it with someone else who needs to get clean as well. I don't know the logic behind that. But there's no concern at all about saving water, as long as you're not saving water in their house.

Their virtue always has to reside on the western side of the range, where it resides also with their power policy. Virtue is an easy thing with somebody else's chequebook. This whole process, of course, is as obscure—and, in some forms, obscene—as if the people from the western side of the range started making policies on where the roads and tunnels in Sydney or Melbourne would go. We'd have virtue signals about how we believe that it's only proper that we start closing down roads in Sydney to reduce carbon emissions.

What we have seen, all through this, is that the Labor Party, the government—hand in glove with the Greens—has managed to create a complete affliction on the lives of people in rural areas. This Murray-Darling Basin change is going to be massively problematic—not so much for the people who get the money, but for the people who are left behind. If you keep taking irrigators away from an irrigation scheme, then the cost to run the scheme remains with the few who stay. It's like having a high-rise building: if you've only got a few tenants, how do they pay the strata fees? If you've only got a few people in an irrigation scheme, how do they maintain the scheme?

For Australia in general, there's one thing we've got to realise: there are so many things that can go wrong in Australia, but one thing that should never go wrong, and hasn't gone wrong, is that we can always feed ourselves. Other countries don't have that blessing. If we're to respect that blessing, we've got to make sure the people in the country have the water to grow the food. You can't have this bizarre belief that, if you take away the water and restrict their capacity to manage the land, they'll be able to provide you with the food. People on the land will always try and make sure the cities in Australia are fed, no matter what. No matter what the price, they'll always make sure that the food gets to the cities, because it's our job. It's our role as Australians for our fellow Australians.

You don't seem to be looking like you appreciate what we're doing; you really don't. You make our life incredibly difficult. You put our costs through the roof, and now you're taking away the fundamental item we require to do it—the water itself. You started immediately after you got into government. The money that we had on the table for Hells Gate, the Bowen pipeline, Urannah Dam, Dungowan Dam, Emu Swamp Dam, Wyangala Dam—all these water projects were taken off the table. You kept the money for Paradise Dam because that was the Labor Party's debacle in Queensland. We did actually build water projects: Charleston Dam, Scottsdale Irrigation Scheme, Quipolly Dam, Chaffey Dam and the Mallee pipeline. We've always managed because we understand that water is wealth. Without water, you can't grow the food, you can't grow the economy and you can't sustain the area.

We know that 1.5 million people are going to be moving to Australia in the next five years. That's Adelaide. That's four times the size of this city. If you're going to do that, you're going to need to be able to feed them. You're going to have to have the water to feed them. If you're trying to say, 'I have this virtue policy—I'm going to endear myself to the benevolent spirits in the inner suburbs, with their multiple toilets, multiple showerheads and all that water in their houses, by restricting the amount of water that people outside can get,' then you're going to start putting pressure on.

One of the greatest things that this nation can do is to attend to the food task as it arises, as the world walks towards 10 billion people. Tragically, people are starting to starve again. We've got a protein deficit, a carbohydrate deficit, a fats deficit; the food produced by the globe does not match the population. Our job is to do our part in that massive food task. We can't feed them all, but whatever we don't do is going to result in a person you've never met, maybe in the Horn of Africa, maybe in Central America, maybe on a Pacific island, starving to death. Growing food is a very noble thing. We feed and clothe people. We don't work on their weaknesses. We don't work on gambling weaknesses, addictions or things they don't need. We provide the basic essentials of life—food and fibre—to keep them fed and keep them clothed. But you keep on making it so difficult to do this.

I ask you very politely to temper your passion with logic. As Alexander Pope said:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

If you're going to make policies for regional areas, at least go live there for a while. Remember: Adelaide is not in the basin. Go live in Shepparton, Mildura, Goondiwindi, St George, Dirranbandi or Bourke. Go live in the areas which actually rely on this incredible resource. Understand that the reason we get so passionate about this is that we're so aware of the pain that you're about to deliver to some of the poorer people in Australia. That pain works at 180 degrees to the other narratives you have in such things as the referendum on the Voice—you say you're going to help people, but, within the same day, you're moving policy to actually hurt them.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Cast your mind back to the last drought, some three years ago, when the Darling River stopped flowing for more than 400 days, when farming communities were brought to their knees, desperate for water, when millions of native fish died and gruesome environmental images were broadcast across the world. Last month the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, struck a deal with basin state and territory governments in order to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. This historic agreement reflected the policy that Labor took to the last election to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full. For me, as an ACT representative, this is important. The ACT is one of the signatory governments. I note that the minister who's responsible, Shane Rattenbury, has talked about the importance of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to the ACT.

This bill offers more time, more options, more money and more accountability, and it comes after a decade of sabotage and delay from those opposite. Upon coming to office, the coalition waged an insidious war against the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. They tied up projects in impossible rules so they couldn't deliver water savings, they blocked water recovery programs and they tried to cut the final recovery targets. Over nine years, of the 450 gigalitres of environmental water, guess how many they delivered? Two—just two gigalitres. On that trajectory, they would have eventually delivered the 450 gigalitres by about the year 4000. That is how much they undermined the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. There were resources there to help deliver the 450 gigalitre target in the Water for the Environment Special Account. But there is still some $1.3 billion in that account unspent.

Those opposite like to talk about the power of markets. They like to talk about the ingenuity of business. They like to suggest that they're somehow the party of the free market. But, when it comes to voluntary water buybacks, they suddenly throw up their hands and say: 'No, that's impossible. Markets couldn't possibly deliver.' We aren't arguing that water purchase is the only tool in the box. We're not arguing that it's the first tool at hand, but we are arguing that it needs to be part of the solution. Under this bill, we'll be able to purchase water from willing sellers where it's needed to deliver the plan. In doing so, the minister for the environment is putting in place important rules which ensure that water markets operate as intended. Right now there are no laws against market manipulation, the insider trading prohibition is too narrow and the legal requirement to maintain proper records is too weak. So, as the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, I'm pleased that the Competition and Consumer Commission will be allowed to monitor water prices and investigate misconduct allegations. That'll bring water markets in line with other markets in Australia.

Climate change means that we're going to see more variable rain in the north and less rain in the south-east. It's been forecast that basin flows could fall by as much as 30 per cent by 2050. Hope isn't a plan. We need to recognise that the transition from La Nina to El Nino could well worsen challenges in the basin. We need to put in place a sustainable solution that will operate in the face of climate change. There was a leader in the millennium drought who had words to say about the Murray-Darling Basin. He said:

… the old way of managing the Murray-Darling Basin has reached its use-by date.

…   …   …

… we need to confront head on and in a comprehensive way, the over-allocation of water in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Those words were spoken by former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard. He was right then, and it is right now to ensure that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is implemented in full. I commend the minister for the environment, as well as the states and territories that are working with her on ensuring that we deliver this important outcome for the health of the system, for the sake of farmers and for the sake of future generations.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In a few weeks time in this country, we'll be having a vote on a referendum to change the Constitution. I certainly don't support that change, but I hope at some point in my life I get the chance to support a change to the Constitution that puts responsibility for interstate waterways in the hands of the Commonwealth government. It was certainly something that was attempted by South Australian delegates to the early constitutional conventions to draft our Constitution, but of course the bigger upstream states were not interested in the Commonwealth government having power over something like the Murray-Darling Basin, so we are where we are today, where this challenging circumstance of managing a national resource is still very complex.

It was under the leadership of John Howard that they passed the Water Act in 2007 and committed significant funds, $10 billion, from the Commonwealth towards the development of a plan that could manage some very complex competing interests. All of them are vitally important, including the environmental health of the river, first and foremost, and the agricultural production that relies on irrigation from the Murray. In my home city of Adelaide, 1.7 million people rely on the river Murray for the security of their drinking water. Prior to the passing of the Water Act, I remember well, as a young adult at the time, the water restrictions in Adelaide, just as there were water restrictions throughout the country in that period of the millennium drought. You had to shower with a bucket if you wanted to water your garden. There were extreme water restrictions that created hardships in metropolitan Adelaide and, just as much, in communities that didn't have access to irrigation water for their production. A very significant environmental toll was also taken on the whole of the Murray-Darling Basin.

So we had the passage of the Water Act, and that act, whilst not within the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth, was negotiated and agreed by the governments within the basin: the four states and the ACT. They hold the powers over that water, and it was the Commonwealth, seeking their agreement and bringing significant funding—the $10 billion—that was able to, for the first time, bring together all the relevant governments in the basin in such a powerful and significant way to develop a plan that would see us sustainably managing that water resource. The Gillard government under Minister Burke, the now Leader of the House, developed the plan. That plan initially saw the need to recover 2,750 gigalitres of water, and, when the South Australian government negotiated to sign on to the agreement, an additional 450 gigalitres was negotiated, which is part of the debate we're having right now.

In the intervening time, I think it is very important to acknowledge the hard work that has been done and sacrifices that have been made, particularly by communities in the basin, for the water that's already been recovered. I think we're up to a little over 2,100 gigalitres against the initial 2,750. That is a very significant achievement, and, whilst we can't stop until the job is done, I think it's very important that we acknowledge and respect the fact that a lot of communities have made sacrifices and have done a lot of things to get us as far along this plan as we are.

In the election campaign last year, the now Prime Minister came to Adelaide and said that an Albanese government would deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full and on time. Let me explain what in full and on time is. In full is the 3,200 gigalitres, and on time is by 30 June 2024. That's what the plan that he was talking about then was and still is, regardless of the passage or not of this bill that we're debating now. There was no caveat around that. There was no suggestion that any measures, such as those that are in the bill before us, were necessary to deliver the plan. There was never a suggestion that failing to achieve it by the date of 30 June 2024 would be a problem. Since the Prime Minister made that commitment to the people of Adelaide in an election campaign, seeking their votes and their support for him to become Prime Minister, no new information of any significance whatsoever has come to light to justify breaking that promise.

Whatever view the now government has about the progress of the implementation of the plan, there is no new revelation regarding that progress. To be fair to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, they are very good at publishing and keeping up to date a whole range of metrics about the plan, about its implementation, about how it's going and about what the task is ahead. For the now Prime Minister to say to the people of Adelaide, 'I'll implement the plan in full and on time,' and break that promise is absolutely outrageous. What we are now told and what this bill seeks to implement is a whole set of new arrangements that are completely at odds with the commitment the Prime Minister gave to the people of South Australia during the last election campaign.

Since then we've got a new environment minister, and to be fair to this environment minister she did not have this portfolio in opposition. Through media speculation at least we can deduce there was a degree of discomfort from the now environment minister that she was being given this portfolio when she had the education portfolio in opposition, was very dedicated and committed to it and possibly had a reasonable expectation she would have it in government. I remember listening to the Prime Minister's press conference when he announced his new cabinet line-up after the election, and my ears did prick up when he talked about appointing the now environment minister as the Minister for the Environment and Water and singled out the Murray-Darling Basin Plan as one of the great challenger this minister would have in justifying why he was appointing her. For those of us that know the dynamic between the Prime Minister and the now Minister for the Environment and Water, it's very interesting to reflect on what the Prime Minister's view was about whether or not it was going to be possible to keep that promise he gave to the people of South Australia. In the person he chose to appoint as the minister responsible for either keeping that promise or, as has now transpired, breaking that promise, Minister Plibersek—perhaps the Prime Minister knew all along we would be in the situation we're in now. If that's true, then he went to the people of South Australia and made them a promise he knew he couldn't keep, and the people voting for this legislation today are voting to break a promise this government made to the people of South Australia.

There are some extremely concerning things in this bill, and I come back to the 450 gigalitres. There's a lot of talk about the 450 gigalitres and lots of different perspectives and opinions on the 450 gigalitres. Mine is unequivocally that that water was committed and promised to South Australia for environmental outcomes. The minister can correct me when she sums up this bill, because it is difficult legislation to deeply absorb and understand, but certainly it is my understanding, from reading elements of this legislation, that this bill will allow that 450 gigalitres to not exclusively come to South Australia. If anyone from South Australia votes for this bill and votes to allow anything less than 450 gigalitres to cross the South Australian border, then that would be absolutely shameful. I standard to be corrected if that is not the case, but the drafting of the legislation and my interpretation of it is that the 450 gigalitres will now be allowed to be used for expanded environmental purposes outside of South Australia. So a solemn promise made by the Prime Minister to deliver the plan on time will be broken by the passing of this legislation, and a solemn promise to deliver 450 gigalitres of direct environmentally beneficial water across the border into South Australia will be broken.

Now we see that we're removing the socioeconomic test for water that is purchased. I've very publicly said I am supportive of water purchasing where the socioeconomic test is applied and met, and I think about communities within South Australia, in the Riverland, and what this legislation could mean for them. On a pro-rata basis, nearly 40 gigalitres of water could be ripped out of the Riverland in South Australia as part of what this legislation enables and permits. I can go the local corner store in Adelaide and buy a carton of Nippy's orange juice made from oranges that were grown and freshly squeezed 200 kilometres away in Waikerie. I can go to my fruit and vegetable store and, largely speaking, almost every item of produce there is grown within a couple of hundred kilometres of Adelaide. It is one of the great things about living in Adelaide, the amazing fresh produce and local production that we have. Taking 40 gigalitres of water out of the Riverland will have a spectacular impact on that fresh produce with lost production from what we see as being vitally important for those communities and for our state's economy. It will also affect such a fantastic part of living in a city like Adelaide, which is having access to that unbelievable local fresh produce.

This bill essentially removes the socioeconomic test, and if this bill requires the necessary water to be acquired through these buybacks. That will mean the share of the expected burden of that on a community like the Riverland would be nearly 40 gigalitres of water. We have seen the Victorian Labor government's excellent work when it comes to assessing the socioeconomic impact of what some of these decisions would mete out in our communities. The impact would be in the form of lost production, lost jobs and potentially importing the fresh food and produce in the ridiculous circumstance where we could grow it ourselves, but we choose not to.

The plan is absolutely vital, and there are no winners in this plan. It is not about pitting irrigators against water consumers in metropolitan Adelaide or people with environmental views on what needs to be done, because we are dealing with the ultimate economic problem here of satisfying infinite demand with limited supply. The amount of water that is in the basin, which is obviously extremely variable, is the finite part, and we would love to use as much as we want for irrigation. We would love to have unbelievable flows permanently and constantly, ensuring the environmental sustainability of the basin. If you are from somewhere like Adelaide it's important that your drinking water supply is extremely reliable and secure, so we need to think laterally about some of the things that should be considered in achieving the full implementation of this plan.

We have a desalination plant in Adelaide, and a few years ago then Prime Minister Morrison went to then Premier Marshall and a deal was done to turn that desal plant on, to use the water from that desal to offset the Adelaide intake and to provide that same amount of water to grow fodder to feed stock during a drought. There are a lots of other lateral and innovative things that we can consider. There are a lot of projects, a lot of ideas and a lot of technology, and it is a very difficult and challenging task. But what this bill does to my home state and my home city is walk away from an election promise to deliver the plan on time, walk away from the guarantee of giving us 450 gigalitres of environmental water and potentially put irrigation communities like the Riverland in a situation where they lose 40 gigalitres of water and all that lost production from our economy in South Australia. I certainly will not be supporting this bill.

David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. I do wonder if the member for Sturt was as outraged at the failings of the previous government as he is at this government for fixing the size of those failings. As a member of parliament whose electorate falls directly into the Murray-Darling Basin, it's important for me to see a plan that allows the state and territory governments more time, options and funding to deliver water back into the basin to ensure a healthy and sustainable basin for the future.

This government is working to ensure that we pass on Australia's environment, land, sea and rivers to future generations in better health. That's our commitment. We're acting to protect, repair and manage nature so it grows stronger. This includes managing the water resources of our most productive region, the Murray-Darling Basin to withstand longer, deeper droughts, more frequent floods and bushfires and everything else climate change will throw our way. Irrigated agriculture in the basin produces about 15 per cent of Australia's food and fibre, contributing $8.6 billion to our economy every year. The basin is valued for its productivity and also for its beauty. Tourism is worth $11 billion per year. It's home to 2.3 million Australians, and more than three million people drink its water each and every day. It's home to 16 internationally significant wetlands, 35 endangered species and 120 different species of water birds. The Murrumbidgee River, which runs through my electorate of Bean and effectively drains most of the Australian Capital Territory, is the third-longest river in Australia. Canberra is the largest population catchment that resides in the Murray-Darling Basin.

The Murrumbidgee River starts in the Australian Alps and completes its journey on the semi-arid riverine plains. The river catchment, located in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, is diverse and complex. Not only is a large population supported by water from this system but the Murrumbidgee's largest distributary, the Tumut River, houses part of the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme. The Murrumbidgee River is an important water source for many wetlands, including the Tuckerbil swamp near Leeton and 16 wetlands listed as nationally significant in the Directory of Important Wetlands. The mountains at the eastern end of the Murrumbidgee catchment are the country of the Ngunnawal and Ngarigo nations. The Kambah Pool on the Murrumbidgee is frequented by Canberrans, offering a reprieve from the heat and an opportunity for Canberrans to enjoy the tranquillity of the Murrumbidgee River and surrounding Red Rocks Gorge. I welcome any members of this House who might like to go for a hike along the Murrumbidgee corridor with me on any weekends that they might spend in this state, which would be time well spent. There would be genuine appreciation for the beauty and significance of the Murrumbidgee.

It's therefore important for me and my constituents that the long-term management of the basin is secured and sustainable. The basin plan in 2012 was built on cooperative work to save rivers pushed to the brink in the Millennium Drought. It came from a period of environmental catastrophe, and it's designed to avoid another environmental catastrophe. Basin governments, including the Australian government, signed on to the plan—promise to the Australian people that we would work as one to protect what was valuable. The plan was developed to manage the basin as a whole connected system, including setting sustainable water extraction limits.

It should be fully implemented by June next year, but that's not going to happen. Sir Angus Houston, Chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, has provided advice that unequivocally finds that full implementation of the basin plan will not be possible by 30 June 2024. Sir Angus's assessment was:

While much has been achieved in the decade of Basin Plan implementation, the Authority remains deeply concerned about key aspects of the Plans delivery.

I have great respect for the scientists, the engineers and the program officers of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, having represented them for the best part of a decade before coming to this place. But the implementation of the plan is at a critical juncture. It's important that governments act to overcome challenges inhibiting the full delivery of the plan as quickly as possible.

That's why this government ran a series of consultations in May and June this year to ask people for their ideas about how to best reach the plan's water recovery targets. We received 131 submissions from groups and individuals right across the basin. Overwhelmingly, those submissions supported the plan. In these submissions, we heard calls for greater flexibility in achieving water recovery targets, calls to extend time frames and calls for investment in measures that deliver tangible environmental outcomes. These insights informed the agreement struck between basin jurisdictions last month to get the plan back on track.

Basin water ministers worked hard and in good faith in recent months on the package of measures. We agreed the need for more time, more money, more options and more accountability. We know the next drought is just around the corner. The threats to the health of our iconic rivers and the people, plants and animals that rely on them are increasing. It's more critical than ever that our rivers are managed in the interests of nature as well as in the interests of communities and industries.

If we are to pass the Murray-Darling on to future generations in better health, we must finish what we started. The Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 makes sensible and practical amendments to the Water Act 2007 and consequential amendments to the Basin Plan 2012 so we can get on with the job and finish what we started. We're extending Basin Plan time lines to achieve water recovery targets and time lines for the states to deliver water infrastructure projects that keep more water in productive use. We're removing overly restrictive rules so we can recover the 450 gigalitres of water for enhanced environmental outcomes, and we're getting rid of the cap on voluntary water purchases. These changes are necessary to deliver on the agreement struck between Murray-Darling Basin water ministers to provide long asked-for certainty to basin stakeholders.

We are also introducing a suite of water market reforms that will bring integrity and transparency into the system. Basin water markets have grown in value and complexity, outstripping the current rules in place to manage them. These reforms mean those buying and selling water can have confidence that the market is operating fairly, everyone is subject to the same rules and everyone has access to the same information at the same time.

The third part of this bill involves substantial and overdue reform to Australia's water market. Water markets are an important part of our agricultural system, but as things currently stand they lack integrity and transparency. There are no laws against market manipulation. The insider trading prohibition is too narrow, and the legal requirement to maintain proper records is too weak. As a result, there has been widespread mistrust in the system across regional Australia. Two years ago, the ACCC examined this market in some depth and found that its rules were inadequate and needed to be reformed. There's widespread consensus across government, across the farming sector and across most of this parliament, I believe, that we need to improve this regulation, and that's what this legislation will do.

The bill introduces a framework to create an enforceable mandatory code for water market intermediaries. It introduces civil penalties for market manipulation and doubles the penalty for insider trading. It will allow the ACCC, as the code and conduct regulator, to monitor water prices and investigate misconduct allegations. This will bring water markets in line with the standards in other markets. These changes will penalise bad behaviour, and they will also increase public transparency. There will be new obligations on basin states and territory governments, irrigation infrastructure operators, and water exchanges to generate, record, collect and report water market information. The Bureau of Meteorology would collate this information from across the basin and make it publicly available via a water data hub, with live market updates on a new water markets website. The Inspector-General of Water Compliance will have new powers to monitor and enforce the new data reporting obligations. These changes will help secure Australia's water future through the next dry stretch and beyond.

The original deadlines were set for June 2024, and in the early years we were well on track to meet those deadlines. But the last government spent a decade sabotaging that plan. They tied up projects in impossible rules so they couldn't deliver water savings. They blocked water recovery programs. They tried to cut the final recovery targets to keep them below scientific recommendations. As a result, progress slowed to a dribble under the previous government. Because of this, it is now impossible to deliver on the original time line. In nine years, those opposite delivered an abysmal two gigalitres of that 450, which put them on track, as the minister said earlier in the House today, to complete the plan sometime around the year 4000. We've delivered more in nine months than those opposite did in nine years, and now we've delivered or contracted 26 gigalitres in total already.

Those opposite were told it wasn't working again and again. They were told that in the first Water for the Environment Special Account report. They were told that in the second account report, which they kept secret before the last election. They knew the program had stalled completely, but for nine years they kept the handbrake on water recovery. What this legislation does is remove that handbrake so that we can finally deliver that water. That means giving the account more flexibility, in line with the Water Act's objectives.

With these changes, we are opening up the full suite of water recovery options. We'll be able to invest in on-farm water infrastructure, in land and water purchases and in other innovative water recovery mechanisms where it's sensible to do so. This is critical nation-building work, and when a community is affected by change, we will never leave them behind. We'll provide significant transitional assistance if these voluntary water purchases have secondary impacts on communities.

Our government has worked with states and territories, with farmers and irrigators, with scientists and experts, with environmentalists and with First Nations groups. This bill offers more time, more options, more money and more accountability. It delivers more water for the environment, more certainty for farmers and industry, more financial support for affected communities, more protection for native plants and animals and more hope for Australia's most important river system.

We can never forget why Australian governments designed the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in the first place. With the consequences of climate change becoming more rampant, we on this side of the House know that the next drought is just around the corner. Our country is facing an environmental emergency. If we don't act now to preserve the Murray-Darling, our basin towns will be unprepared for drought, our native animals will face the threat of extinction, our river ecosystems will risk environmental collapse and our food and fibre production will be insecure and unsustainable. A healthy basin means healthy communities. It means a river that families can enjoy, that promotes recreation and tourism and, most importantly, that provides clean drinking water to three million Australians every day. This is an important moment for basin communities and for any Australian who cares about the health of our environment. That's why we have a Murray-Darling Basin Plan in this country—to help us through the dry years, to make sure that there's enough water flowing through the river system at its lowest moments to make it to the next rain.

Our government made a commitment to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full, and that's exactly what we are doing. I thank the minister for the work that she has done on this legislation. I thank the Murray-Darling Basin Authority for the extraordinary work that they have done over the last 10 to 20 years, but particularly in the last decade in difficult circumstances. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.