Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Hansard source

As you well know, Senator Xenophon, I am quite familiar with this particular place that you refer to in the Riverland. I am very familiar with the good work that they do up there. But I think it is fair to say that I do not think any government in Australian history has committed as much money to a range of water-saving measures as this government. Admittedly we did it because of the dreadful circumstances that existed in what I think is generally now known as the Millennium Drought, but we committed a huge amount of money to coming up with water-saving programs. Some of that involved new technologies. I am in a privileged position because urban water is one of the areas I look after, and I think it is fair to say technologies that we have developed through that 10-year drought are now being picked up by countries all around the world. We are selling a lot of our technologies. So there is a heap of work being done out there right now with money that the federal government is providing by way of grants, generally met with equal amounts of funding from other organisations like states, councils and individual companies. If you look at the work that this government has done in terms of trying to encourage innovative ideas with federal funding then I think we have a really good story to tell. So I have no hesitation in saying to you, Senator Xenophon, that we have an arrangement here and we want to stick to that arrangement. There are lots of other areas where this government is doing really good work on new technologies with water saving. We want to get this bill through. We want to restore the environmental conditions of the Murray-Darling. We want to get those Murray-Darling communities back to good health. That is what we are doing with this legislation. There are plenty of other things we are doing right now around Australia in the area you are talking about in seeking these amendments.