Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too would like to take note of the answer given by Senator Colbeck to the excellent question from South Australian senator, Senator Wong, about allocation of responsibilities for the water portfolio under this new look but same-old-policies coalition government.

South Australians have every reason to be extremely concerned about the brawling that is going on in the coalition party room between the Nationals and the Liberals about who is going to end up with responsibility for water, and in particular for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and its implementation. South Australians know that giving that responsibility to Mr Barnaby Joyce, who clearly wants it, will be a disaster for South Australia because Mr Joyce, the agriculture minister, has always made it clear that he has no insight into or interest in the downstream plight of the river and the communities along it.

If I remember rightly, Mr Joyce at one time told South Australians that if they were concerned about the lack of water and the poor quality of water in the lower reaches of the river where we live in South Australia, then they should move up north to where the water was. Of course, he backtracked from that pretty quickly when he realised what a dreadful thing that was to say to the Riverland communities in South Australia. Nevertheless, he said it and, therefore, you would have to think he actually believes it. Now we are talking about that man, Mr Joyce, being responsible for the River Murray and for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan that is so important to my community in South Australia.

My fellow South Australians in this place should agree that the state that is most affected by the overallocation of the river is South Australia, and yet South Australia also happens to be the one state where the National Party has no representatives and so the National Party in the federal parliament could not care less about South Australia. We do not have federal Nationals in South Australia, but we do have Liberals though, and some of those Liberals have been very, very concerned about this impasse on who is going to get responsibility ultimately for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Mr Pasin, the Liberal member for the seat of Barker, has already expressed his concerns. He said that he was very nervous about Mr Joyce having control of water. He said:

The National Party don't have significant interest in the lower end of the river system …

Of course, he was right. Mr Pasin is not often right, but he was right in that particular regard, because we know that the Nationals do not care about South Australia.

At least Senator Ruston, the other coalition member angling to get control of the water portfolio, is a South Australian. She certainly understands the importance of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to South Australia and she comes from the Riverland. If you are going to give the water portfolio and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to a member of the coalition, then she would probably be the person who would have the most experience to deal with it. But of course that is a sensible decision, and we do not see sensible decisions from this current government, particularly when it comes to managing the environment and precious water resources.

What we have going on is this unseemly brawl that I understand has not been resolved yet. Mr Joyce has written to Mr Turnbull stating his claim for what he thinks should be the case—that is, that he should have control of water and that Senator Ruston, the assistant minister, should have responsibility for agriculture and wine. I do not know what Mr Joyce has got against agriculture or horticulture and wine, but obviously he does not want to be troubled with those other industries that are also important to my home state, particularly wine. That is what he said to Mr Turnbull. Mr Turnbull has not responded to him yet, as far as I understand. There are some negotiations going on that Senator Colbeck alluded to in his pathetic attempt at an answer to the question from Senator Wong today.

I hope the people of South Australia are paying careful attention to the brawling that is going on in this coalition government. We might have a new Prime Minister, but we have the same old policies and the same old fights between the Nats and their coalition partners. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.