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

Make no mistake: the Australian Senate tonight puts the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in peril. We've heard plenty of claims made, none of them based on science. No specifics—just pure opportunistic politics, coming, sadly, from too many sides.

I, like Senator Wong, have held the water portfolio. I've been there through all the difficult steps of the development of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. I was there when the Water Act was passed initially, by Malcolm Turnbull, back in 2007. It is rank opportunism that now sees, in the midst of a South Australian election and the Batman by-election, the Labor Party, the Greens and the Nick Xenophon Team play politics with this issue. It puts at risk the basin plan, and, in doing that, it potentially leaves stranded a plan that could have, and should have, secured environmental sustainability throughout the basin and secured the equivalent of 3,200 gigalitres of environmental water support and flows throughout the system. But, instead, it leaves that stranded far, far short. Yes, there are serious allegations of noncompliance in places, and they're being investigated by serious entities: the police, the New South Wales ICAC and others. But, frankly, just because people still commit crimes, we don't throw out the laws.

By destroying and by turning their backs on the commitment that Tony Burke gave as water minister six years ago to deliver a review of the northern basin, the Labor Party are tonight turning their backs on the word they gave by siding with the Greens instead. That's shameful. That puts at risk something that many of us have fought for for over a decade—