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

No, he is very funny, I think. That is why it is difficult. He is one of the few people who are actually funny in this place. Two months after Premier Bracks announced this project, Mr Turnbull brought forward the Water Act. Was there a provision in it which prevented Food Bowl 1? No. Was there a provision that said, ‘We are so worried about the basin we are going to make sure that the Victorian project does not proceed’? They could have done that then before the Victorian Liberal Party said, ‘Actually we are going to use it even though people don’t like it.’ Did he put a provision in the act which prevents it? No, he did not. So maybe next time when you come in here or go out to communities and start to lecture people about why this is so bad, you could be upfront and honest about your complete failure, in the state party, in the state parliament and in the federal parliament, to ever have backed the words and the rhetoric with deeds. That is the hypocrisy, that you come in here and you say these things but you know you would not do anything different, you never did anything different and your colleagues in Victoria would not do anything different.

A number of other issues have been raised. I think Senator Siewert described our involvement as cursory. I say, Senator, on the involvement the federal government has in this project, that I think you might have been absent from the chamber when I pointed out we are not funding this project; it is Food Bowl 2 that is being funded, and I think you are aware of that. But Minister Garrett’s decision making was not cursory under the EPBC Act. He is a minister who takes his accountability under that legislation very seriously. He has put in place as the decision maker a range of decisions and conditions of the approval, which is really the only legislative involvement he has with this project. They essentially ensure that Melbourne only receives a share of water saved through the Food Bowl Modernisation Project and that independent audited reports—this goes in part, Senator Xenophon, to your issue—of the savings achieved are undertaken. It is also a condition that savings allocated to the Living Murray—that is environmental water, water for rivers again—may not be allocated to Melbourne and that water designated as an environmental reserve must be maintained. In other words, this is about protecting environmental flows, about ensuring that through the Commonwealth’s involvement, which is as an EPBC Act decision maker, the conditions require the auditing of the savings, the reporting of those and the safeguarding of environmental water. So, with respect, Senator Siewert, and I know in this debate we can all say things at times, I do not believe it is cursory and I do not think that is a fair assessment of Minister Garrett’s decision.

Senator Birmingham—this is another one of the hypocrisies tonight—was saying, ‘Why don’t you do something about Melbourne’s water supply?’ As I understand it, Senator Birmingham is a moderate who then lined up with Mr Costello, but maybe I am wrong. Mr Costello was the Treasurer who said that the Commonwealth had no role in urban water. I thought that was your party’s position, that you had no role in urban water. We, on the other hand, went to the election with commitments on urban water. And guess what? They were commitments that we will deliver on and are delivering on, commitments that were funded through the budget: a billion dollars for urban water desalination, the stormwater harvesting fund—