Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young has really covered the field, but I just want to comment on the minister’s approach to this. As the minister said, the Greens have been campaigning to get action on the Murray-Darling Basin for many years, and that included a 3,000-gigalitre guaranteed flow. We campaigned for that because the scientific evidence was that one quarter of the flow should be guaranteed for environmental purposes. If only the Howard government had acted on that we would not now be looking at a river system in such a parlous state. Indeed, it may have helped if the Labor opposition at the time had been apologists for the Greens and supported the position that we were putting.

We are now debating a very serious piece of legislation; it is a major piece of legislation for the minister. But the whole role of this Senate and its committee system is to, through the community, improve legislation where we can. If the government or the opposition have amendments that the Greens consider meritorious then we will be supporting them. I can make the opposition relaxed by telling them that we are not going to be defrayed from that by Minister Wong’s talk about apologists. The only thing that we do not want to do is have to apologise to the community for denying good amendments on the basis of a political stand. This amendment has merit for the reasons that Senator Hanson-Young and Senator Birmingham have outlined. It is our intention to support it.