Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. It changes the word ‘must’ to ‘may’ in the section regarding the composition of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. This amendment would enable more than one member of the authority to be full time. The original plan was to require all the members to be full time in the early phase. But then when the nature of the authority changed there was a decision made to make only one of the members full time and to make the others part time. This change from ‘must’ to ‘may’ will enable more than one member to potentially be full time. The Wentworth Group highlighted this issue in their submission. The National Farmers Federation recognised that the decision was made that there should be only one full-time member. The role of the authority was somewhat reduced because of the changes that came after Victoria refused to refer its power and therefore there was not necessarily a requirement for everybody to be full time. However, what the NFF pointed out was that where we go from here is largely dependent on the IGA. What they were saying is that the role of the authority might get bigger in the future. The legislation at the moment restricts the authority by saying that only one member can be full time. This amendment puts in place a provision to enable members to be made full-time members if in the future that is required. Rather than the government of the day having to come back here to make an amendment to change ‘must’ to ‘may’, we can do it now to enable more members to be full-time members if that is required.