Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

The government is not going to support these amendments. I ask Senator Siewert and her party to consider this issue: there is a call for more independence in the authority, but by these and other amendments that the Greens are moving they are in effect seeking, via legislation and via this Senate chamber, to be far more directive and prescriptive in relation to the authority than the existing act. I invite the Greens to consider the consistency of a position which on the one hand says, ‘We want the authority to be more independent of government or whomever,’ but on the other hand seeks far more prescriptive provisions in the legislation around what the authority is to do.

Our strong view, which was our election commitment, is that the independence of the authority is important. It is clearly against legislative and policy criteria as set out in the act. We have concerns about seeking to prescribe certain matters by legislation—and I am not only talking about the current amendments but a range of others that have been moved by Senator Siewert. Senator Siewert anticipated my response—she said, ‘I know that the act already has these provisions in it,’ and at section 21(1) it does already reflect relevant international treaties. Section 20 of the act provides that a Basin Plan must give effect to relevant international agreements, which include the Ramsar convention and a range of other conventions and international agreements, some of which Senator Siewert referred to. Other relevant conventions can be prescribed by regulation. Obviously it is not the case that we need to reproduce the words of any particular convention, or part thereof, in order to give effect to it.