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

Senator Siewert has put the Greens’ position very clearly, but let me just add to that. We are not in the Hawke government’s situation relating to the Franklin Dam where we had a government which said, ‘We will use federal powers against an intransigent state to get the proper result here.’ We are in a position similar to that of the Fraser government, which preceded the Hawke government, which said, ‘We will try to work with the states to get an outcome, even though we are not going to achieve that outcome through taking that direction.’

In terms of a national effort to deal with the urgent situation of the Murray-Darling Basin, this legislation is manifestly 10th rate. That said, I do not think this is an occasion for rejecting the advance in thinking there has been—that is, that it has to be a national fix. I think this is a staging post for getting the result that Senator Xenophon wants—and he is absolutely right—which is to have a much more powerful authority able to deal with the plight of the Murray-Darling Basin than the one we see here. It is a small step on the road to what should be a solution that should be urgently invoked, and it should not have the timeline of 2019 anywhere near it. That said, the north-south pipeline issue is one that the opposition should have stood strong on.