Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

These are the findings of those inquiries that Senator O'Sullivan refers to in his interjection. The Basin-wide Compliance Review at the end of last year, for instance, concluded that there has been a concerning systemic failure to protect low flows in unregulated rivers in the northern basin. That failure is not a failure arising from criminal activity; it is a failure deliberately engineered by the New South Wales water minister. That minister made changes in 2012, which were extremely significant, to allow irrigators to exchange lower-security water licences for higher-security licences at next to no cost, to allow unlimited carryover from year to year, to remove any limits on pump sizes, and to allow an individual take limit of up to 300 per cent in one year. These aren't failures that arise from a handful of criminals; these are systemic failures that arise from a failure of management by the New South Wales government.