Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I answer by congratulating the Prime Minister and the premiers of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia for agreeing on a very historic and substantial reform of the way in which we manage our water resources in this country. The three Labor premiers and the Prime Minister have signed an historic deal to transfer responsibility for the Murray-Darling Basin to the Commonwealth and, in return, the Commonwealth will invest some $10 billion over the next 10 years in vastly improving the efficiency with which we use water from the Murray-Darling Basin. I congratulate those Labor premiers for reaching an agreement with the Prime Minister on such an historic arrangement and I urge the Labor Premier of Victoria to join his Labor colleagues from the other three jurisdictions in signing on to this agreement.

As I said quite openly on this matter, it has been dealt with in estimates and I really have nothing to add. How the package was developed and presented is all on the public record. That is, as with all governments, the prerogative of the Prime Minister. The question of the detailed costings and the programs that will be funded under this tremendous initiative, for which the Prime Minister should get enormous accolades, will of course be considered by the ERC.

Senator George Campbell had a very long lunch; could someone wake him up? This is a very important question and a senator from New South Wales should be concentrating on it. The full, detailed costings of the programs to be funded under this tremendous initiative will go through the ERC and the full budget process and be detailed in full in the budget over the forward estimates period. Again, I congratulate the Prime Minister and the three Labor premiers. This is a fabulous initiative and, most importantly, it provides water security for my own home state and Senator Wong’s state of South Australia. She should be applauding the initiative instead of nitpicking in the pathetic way that she is.