Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, I withdraw. Their current campaign of television advertisements is tantamount to a public education campaign that couldn't be further from the truth.

To put in context the volume of water that the government is planning to buy back: it is more than all the water left for irrigation in South Australia, Sunraysia and the Victorian GMID combined. If the water were to be bought out of these regions, their economies would be wiped out and Australians would be faced with massive increases in the cost of food. That is why I am so interested and that is why we have asked for these documents.

The failure of the minister to release any information on how the government's water policies and legislation will impact these communities, how they came to some of the figures or provide any information about the cost of the government's policy is deplorable. The Senate inquiry into the water amendment bill was a farce, with the department tasked with implementing the bill refusing to say which communities will be at the forefront of providing the 450 gigalitres of additional water, what the environmental purposes of that water will be, how much recovering that water will cost and what the impact will be on taxpayers and communities into the future.

We hope that the government has actually done the work to have that information, but we don't know. This is not the first rodeo when it comes for the Minister for the Environment and Water ignoring the wishes of the Senate. The failure to comply with the Senate and produce the documents, as requested by these OPDs, is just a repeat of past efforts. Last year we had the absurd situation where the government deliberately and repeatedly withheld documents from the Senate through Senate motions 318 and 319. Then the government couldn't even get their story straight as to why it couldn't comply. At first they said it was because there were over 1.8 million documents. That was revised and then it was claimed there were only 850,000 documents.

It begs the question as to why the 459 staff at the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the staff in the department have been so busy producing what could be about 1.5 documents per hour per staff member on this topic alone since the Albanese government came to power. I mean, really, I wish. That would be very efficient if that's how much they were producing or, you could say, non-efficient because what else are they doing? They're meant to be modelling, conducting reviews and providing fair and frank advice.

The final insult was that, of the 1.8 million claimed documents, they only produced 37. That is why we had the follow-up OPDs—nos. 455, 456 and 457. I acknowledge that 455 and 456 have only been tabled today. They were due yesterday and I'm now told they have been tabled today. There has not been enough time for me to go through them. We are still waiting on 457 as a result of the minister's failure again to comply with Senate orders. We are again seeing the complete incompetence of this government and the complete disregard of this government towards this chamber.

I don't want to see any senior bureaucrats bullied or reduced to tears, but I would respectfully ask that the water bureaucrats improve their productivity and not take over two months to pull together a handful of emails and documents. And if it's more than a handful, then you have to ask why. That is why, on our side, we look at efficiency dividends.

As for the minister, her desire for secrecy and her lack of transparency is now commonplace among this government. We know this is the government of nondisclosure agreements and likes to do consultations behind closed doors with the heavy handedness of people who breach the confidence, which is not the open and transparent government that we were promised prior to the election.

It is time the Minister for the Environment and Water directed her department to step away from the keyboard, release the information the Senate had requested and then get out into the communities to do proper consultation on the implementation of the remainder of the Basin Plan, which is what communities are crying out for. We cannot allow this government to continue to ignore the wishes of communities or the wishes of the Senate.

Question agreed to.