Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. A further 1.2 million people depend on its waters to survive. This is so important to those communities. The health of the river channels themselves and the flora and fauna they support are not only vital in their own right but also vital for the economic and social wellbeing of basin communities. We have seen the devastating impact a lack of environmental flows has had on the basin over the past 100 years or more. And, with that knowledge, we must never return to the days where water allocations are based on politics rather than science. If the Prime Minister gives full responsibility for water to Minister Joyce, we will be witnessing the remarkable outcome of the previous Prime Minister having stronger and more principled environmental credentials than the current Prime Minister—a Prime Minister who should know better and care more, considering that he was in fact once the Minister for the Environment and Water.

Labor is committed to the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is the only key we can turn that will return our most important river system to health. If we do not turn that key, there will not be a healthy river system. Without a healthy river system we will lose our sustainable communities and industries in the Murray-Darling Basin. The success of the Basin Plan is critically important for Australia. Its success is dependent on the continuing support of the two major parties and the basin states, who I recall all reconfirmed that support just weeks ago during the debate on the Water Amendment Bill. This was another example of the good policy outcomes in extremely complicated areas that can be secured through reasoned debate; when everyone with an interest in the issue can have confidence in the system and the decision-making process.

It should not be up to Labor alone to keep reinforcing the need for bipartisanship and a strong Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The crossbench senators should be aware that there has been significant and ongoing Commonwealth investment that ensures farms remain productive as the plan is delivered. Crossbench senators should understand that there has been significant commitment to the Basin Plan and to the health of our rivers and the ecosystems and communities they support. The government should confirm unambiguously that on its side of this chamber this significant commitment to the plan remains. Short-sighted attacks on the future of the Murray-Darling Basin water system must be dismissed.

Desperate attempts like those that have been made by Minister Joyce to claw at the Prime Minister's attention must be ignored—and that is all that is going on here with the crossbench senators. The government must share the load, overcome its self-induced confusion and division and stop considering options that undermine public perceptions of its commitment to the plan or reduce and confuse stakeholder confidence in the plan, its processes and outcomes—because that is what you will do.

Labor is calling on the Prime Minister to stand firm on his bipartisan position on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan for the sake of the farmers, for the sake of the environment and for the sake of the communities. Do not change the longstanding bipartisan commitment that we have for the Murray-Darling.