Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes the threat to the communities and the environments of the Murray-Darling Basin posed by the combined pressures of climate change, extended drought and over-allocation of our limited shared water resources;

(b)

welcomes recent measures by some governments and communities of the basin to reduce their dependence on the system or recover and set aside water for environmental needs;

(c)

notes the concerns expressed by the Victorian Auditor-General in his analysis of the water savings claimed by the Victorian Government’s Food Bowl Modernisation Project;

(d)

condemns the decision by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts (Mr Garrett) to give approval to the Sugerloaf Pipeline under the provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999; and

(e)

calls on all governments to commit that no new projects or schemes that increase the level of dependence on and the amount of water extracted from the system will be countenanced or approved.

Question agreed to.