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

I anticipated that proposition, which is why I made the point about the $120 million the government is already putting in place to ensure potable water. I hope the Liberal Party in South Australia are considering very seriously their position on this bill. There are a range of significant advantages in the bill for South Australia. One of them is, for the first time, the formalisation of arrangements which have worked informally until now through the process that the former Prime Minister and other former ministers established, I think on Melbourne Cup day 2006, to deal with the extraordinarily low levels of inflow and to ensure that critical human needs were met. What we have achieved through this legislation—and South Australian senators from all sides of the chamber should be aware of this—is to obtain agreement from the states, including the upstream states, to formalise those arrangements, thereby giving a far greater level of water security to South Australians.

I know the political point that Senator Fisher is trying to make. We are addressing the issue of the supply of potable water to the Lower Lakes communities, as I have described, through the pipeline mechanism. But this is not a problem where there is a quick and easy fix. It is certainly not a problem that her government was able to find any solution to in 12 years. We are facing an extremely difficult situation, as senators are aware, in the Lower Lakes and Coorong—as we are, frankly, at many wetlands upstream. Senator Fisher can try and make some points about a definition here, but the fact is that this is a more beneficial set of provisions for your state, Senator, than your government ever achieved in the Turnbull bill and, frankly, it should be supported.