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

It is self-evident that the opposition have had to hurriedly put a further amendment in to protect the Snowy River Water for Rivers arrangements in light of the amendments they previously moved in their attempt to criticise the Sugarloaf issue and make that the central issue of water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin. This demonstrates exactly one of the things that we said was a problem with that amendment: that it is all about political gains and trying to make the pipeline the political issue—not the broader and much more significant policy issue of the Murray-Darling. The chamber needs to be aware that this is an amendment which recognises—from the opposition’s own pen—the risk and unintended potential consequences of their amendments in relation to the pipeline, which were clearly politically motivated. I will put that on the record, because I think there is no doubt about that, looking at the history—in particular, looking at the Victorian Liberal Party position and what motivated that. The government does not support this amendment. We did not support the previous amendments that this amendment is trying to fix up.