Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

It is a plan. The intent of the amendment was to ensure that there is a focus on making sure there is adherence to getting those efficiency gains. We believed the best way to make sure there was this focus was through an amendment such as this. You know as well as anyone else, Senator Siewert, of so many of the areas where the gains are to be made. The point of all of this is to ensure that we have that balance in those savings, to make sure that, while some will stay on farm, a large percentage will go back to the environment. We figure that putting a plan in place to do this is going to make more efficacious the government’s ability to get that water back to the system.

I refer to my initial comments. We are just not given a real level of comfort at the moment as to where the government is headed in terms of getting the water. So we would see it, certainly, as a plan to be put in place to get that to happen. On the minister’s comments: the minister put that view that it will tie their hands. I think they would be able to determine well enough an assessment, at least some way into the future, in such a way that it does not tie their hands.