Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Feeney mentioned the Howard government. He might care to reflect on what I said about the reality of his colleagues in Victoria. Senator Feeney, your Victorian Labor colleagues were holding the process up and were playing sheer bloody-minded politics with the Murray-Darling Basin. That was the outrage that occurred in holding it up. Now Senator Wong wants to claim record low inflows as the reason why more cannot be done. Record low inflows are the reason why more should be done quickly and immediately. It is the reason she should be taking urgent steps. We all agree with the long-term action that needs to be taken. We will argue over the details of how long it should take and how quickly it should be taken, but there are immediate things that should be done as well.

Senator Wong, under pressure on this issue, said back in June that she would seek urgent advice on these issues. She told us in this place about urgent advice, so the opposition for some time has been calling for that urgent advice to be released and for Senator Wong to bring forward the November Murray-Darling Basin ministerial council meeting to today, to September, to consider that urgent advice that she said she was seeking. Instead not only do we not get to see the urgent advice when the opposition calls for it but when the Senate asked Minister Wong to table it by midday on Thursday of last week—a Senate Return to Order motion which she blindly ignored—she came in here today and started to say that maybe she would table something but then she corrected herself and said simply that she would be coming in to make a statement.

The challenge for Senator Wong this afternoon is to come in and table clear-cut urgent advice that she sought in June of this year, to table something that is identifiably from that time and demonstrate that she was not just kidding us when she said she was seeking urgent advice. She should show us that it really does exist so that the whole country can see what possible steps could be taken by this government—that they are clearly failing to take—to address the situation in the lower lakes community. The challenge is for her to take up the challenge that the opposition has made and not to just reforms in water— (Time expired)