Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

You'd go to those communities—that's right. That's what I think you would do. You would go and listen and talk to the communities impacted by the bill. What did the Labor senators and the Albanese government choose to do with their numbers on the legislation committee? They chose not to go to any of the basin communities. They chose to conduct a committee inquiry that was solely held in Canberra. Did it go to any of the northern basin communities in Queensland? No, it didn't. Did it go to any of the various basin communities in northern New South Wales? No, it didn't. Did it go to any of the communities through the Murray and Darling systems in southern New South Wales? No, it didn't. Nor did it go to Victoria, nor did it go through the river and irrigation communities in South Australia. The Labor Party just didn't want to listen. It actively chose not to listen.

Knowing that a guillotine is coming on this bill and that the government doesn't want to listen to questions or scrutiny in the Senate, or any of those factors anymore, we present this motion to at least call upon Minister Tanya Plibersek, the Minister for the Environment and Water, to do her job of going out and listening—to do what the government has failed to do today and to comprehensively visit those basin communities who are impacted by this legislation, because their concerns are real ones. I know Senator Wong, when she held this portfolio, visited those communities. I visited those communities. Senator Ruston visited those communities. And, as I said in the debate on this legislation, the important thing when you're visiting those communities is to say the same thing wherever you are. I have stood in those communities and told them why it's important for freshwater flows to go into the lower lakes, just as I have stood in Adelaide and told them why rice and cotton have a place in Australia's irrigation industry—to actually tell the truth and be upfront and honest with all of those communities. That's precisely what Tanya Plibersek should be doing. As Minister for the Environment and Water, she should be getting out and visiting each of those communities and making it crystal clear as to why it is the government has taken action that has broken the consensus across states and territories in support of the Basin Plan.

The Victorian government doesn't support this legislation, doesn't support the action the government is taking. So we have a situation now where the Basin Plan and water reform is in peril as a result of the fact that this government doesn't listen, and it doesn't even listen to the Victorian Labor government in terms of their concerns and their approaches. This government doesn't listen in a way that tries to maintain consensus and support there. It hasn't listened to the communities and hasn't listened to a state Labor government. It's broken the consensus of political support across basin communities and across basin states and, indeed, across this parliament in relation to these reforms.

The concerns are real ones. These communities see this government acting to tear up what Tony Burke put in place, which was the no socioeconomic disadvantage test. It was a Labor government that put that test in place. It was a Labor minister, who is once again a Labor minister and a member of the cabinet today, who put in place a test recognised as important to these communities.

There is much, as I said in this debate, we should be proud of that's been achieved in water reform. Billions and billions of litres of water have been recovered and are actively managed by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder for the benefit of the Murray-Darling Basin system. But this is bad policy. This is a bad approach, and this is a government that is pursuing this because it won't listen. This motion calls upon the minister to listen, to engage, to do the job that she should.