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

Senator Birmingham, you can interject all you like. You said I should just pick up the phone and try and cut a deal. We actually think there is a process here. This is an election commitment. The process is there for states and other levels of government to make application about. But, unlike you, we think the Commonwealth has a role in urban water, and we had two lots of $250 million election commitments which we also funded through our first budget. So the hypocrisy from a party that did not believe prior to the last election that the Commonwealth had a role in urban water lecturing others about the need to have a role in urban water is pretty extraordinary.

The next point I would like to make is in relation to the scope of, essentially, a prohibition. I made the point in the second reading summing-up, and it may be that senators were not aware of this, but there are a range of pipelines and channels which already move water out of the basin. The most obvious are to Adelaide, Manheim to Adelaide, Morgan to Whyalla, Swan Reach to Stockwell, Murray Bridge to Onkaparinga, and Tailem Bend to Keith. I could list a whole range in New South Wales as well for you, Senator Nash, and you would probably laugh at some of my pronunciation, but I could give you a list of the very many pipelines and channels moving water out of the basin in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, and even in Queensland.

It is the case, as I read this amendment, and I might be wrong, that, if, for example, the salinity levels in terms of the current off-takes for Adelaide’s water supply were too high or if there were other reasons in water quality—and of course none of us want this to happen, but I just make this point because of the politics that is being played here—and we were in a position where the South Australian government and the federal government had to look at moving the current off-takes, it is quite likely that that would be prevented by this amendment. So what are the criteria—Adelaide okay and Melbourne not okay? Not if it is John Brumby? The reality is that a lot of politics is being played on this issue.

As I said, when it comes to water, people should judge the Liberal Party not on what they say but on what they do. They come in here and say a lot about Food Bowl, but what they did in government was to not oppose it, to not amend this act. What they do in their state Liberal Party is accept that they are going to use that pipeline, but what they say in here is a different issue. Everybody in this chamber knows—and I do not count the crossbenchers in this because they have a consistent position on these issues—that those on the other side, the alternative government, by playing politics with this issue put the bill at risk. If they press and insist on this amendment, they know that they put the bill at risk. They are playing political games with this, just as they have played with the Murray-Darling Basin for over a decade.