Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The Turnbull government could not be any clearer that we will deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full and on time. That is our absolute commitment, as Senator Moore indicated, which we have emphasised again and again. There are no proposals to change the plan coming from the Turnbull government. We are working to see the plan implemented.

Madam Deputy President, you would be forgiven for thinking that those opposite either have never read the plan that was developed during their time in government or are deliberately misrepresenting the content of it. The plan is not a magic wand or a magic pudding that just says, miraculously, 'You get all of this water back into environmental flows.' The plan is a complex plan with a whole series of different conditions put at different junctures for how things work. We have seen in this complex document that we have worked to implement it to the letter of the document and to the letter of the plan, and yet those opposite seek to misrepresent what is occurring.

Firstly, we have had, most recently, the release of the work of the northern basin review. I have heard those opposite criticise the work of the northern basin review, which suggests that there are some adjustments to the sustainable diversion limits that could be achieved in the northern basin. What they ignore is that Mr Tony Burke himself, the then water minister, wrote to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority as water minister asking for that northern basin review to be included in the plan. We have simply followed through with doing exactly what Tony Burke asked us to do—exactly what the then Labor government put into the plan by having the northern basin review. That is actually implementing and delivering the plan in full and on time, because the plan called for that northern basin review to be undertaken.

Equally, in relation to the 450 gigalitres, the plan is very proscriptive about the process for the development of what is known as the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism. The adjustment mechanism has a number of tests and barriers to it. Those tests include that that adjustment must be achieved with neutral or improved socioeconomic outcomes. It sets out in the plan the criteria of how improved or neutral socioeconomic outcomes are defined. The criteria say it has to either be through the voluntary participation of water users in projects to recover works or through the participation of consumptive water users in other projects in relation to farm efficiency, or through arrangements proposed by a basin state and assessed by that state as achieving water recovery. In fact, to achieve the 450 gigalitres requires either the voluntary participation of farmers or proposals from basin states—that is, the cooperation of basin states, the action of basin states working together—to make it happen.

That is exactly what Senator Ruston just told this chamber: of course, to achieve the full capacity of the plan it requires the basin states to work together. The only threat at present is the failure of the basin states to be able to work together, led by the actions of the South Australian Labor government. When Mr Joyce put on the agenda how it is that those states need to work together and how they are going to address some of the challenges of ensuring that water is recovered with no socioeconomic disadvantage, what happened? The South Australian water minister sat down with the other water ministers and decided to direct the c-word to the Victorian Labor minister—that's right! Then he told everybody else that they could all eff off. That was the approach undertaken by the South Australian Labor water minister. That is not a way that is going to get cooperation from the other states. That is not a way that is going to get them to deliver their commitments or their obligations under the plan as to how it is actually implemented in full, on time and delivered in the way that we want to see that occur.

What we desperately need to see is those opposite urge their political friends and cousins in South Australia to actually engage cooperatively with the other states. They must work with the Labor government in Victoria to engage cooperatively on developing their responsible components of the plan so that it can be implemented as we want it to be: in full, on time and delivering the water flows back into the river to ensure its health, as we are determined to achieve and see occur.