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

I do concur, sadly, that a wrecking role was played by parties in the Senate last night around the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and in particular the Northern Basin Review, which, it is important for everybody to remember, was agreed upon as an action way back in 2012 by the then water minister and now Labor's shadow water minister, Mr Tony Burke, because there was uncertainty about the credibility of some of the research underpinning the way in which northern basin entitlements had been calculated at the time. So there was a commitment made that there would be a fully informed scientific review, and a fully informed scientific review, indeed, was undertaken. It went through all of the proper independent processes of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and, of course, was brought then to the ministerial council, where it received endorsement from all states and territories. As I said before, it is unfortunate that the disallowance of that last night now creates great uncertainty for all of those river communities and puts jobs at risk.