Nationals MP tries to sink Basin Plan petition

Last week NSW Parliament voted to support a royal commission into the Murray Darling Basin Plan, the move has been described by Speak Up for Water as “another small step in a long journey.”

The petition called for a Royal Commission into the Murray Darling Basin Plan and a national water register and had obtained 11,000 signatures.

A Speak Up delegation travelled to Sydney for the petition debate, and for other meetings to highlight the inequities in the Basin Plan and the need for it to be fixed, in the National interest.

“In the end we were extremely pleased with the result, even if the process was a bit frustrating,” said Speak Up chair Shelley Scoullar.

“It showed us yet again that playing politics becomes the priority for those elected to represent our interests, rather than taking the decisive steps which we are seeking to solve obvious problems.”

Mrs Scoullar said it was frustrating when a Nationals MP tried to stop the debate on Thursday, although fortunately, the speaker allowed it to go ahead.

“We met on Thursday morning with Deputy Premier and Nationals leader John Barilaro, and he assured us his party would support our calls for a Royal Commission and National Water Register.

“We also discussed solutions which have the potential to address the imbalance in the Basin Plan and protect our communities, which is what Speak Up is all about”

Despite the support from Mr Barilaro, an anonymous National Party MP attempted to stop the debate, contacting the Parliamentary Speaker to lodge an objection due to alleged conflict of interest over Member for Murray Helen Dalton owning water.

Mrs Dalton has previously publicly and formally declared her water interests.

On entering Parliament, Mrs Dalton made a Facebook video regarding the declaration form for entering parliament, as there was no legal requirement to list water holding for members despite the risks of politicians voting on water policy with the potential of conflicts of interests.

Even peak water bodies went to battle stations stating that a water register would lead to animal activist type protests like those seen with the Aussie Farm Maps fiasco. A claim that does seem a little absurd considering land and water was previously held as one and would have been recorded on the national register for land titles.

Since the removal of water attached to land, we have seen an explosion of downstream development, foreign and domestic corporate and government buy ups of our most precious resource with no transparency. All this secrecy even though the 2004 National Water initiative which sets the overarching polices that the Murray Darling Basin Plan must follow implicitly, states that there must be a national water register that is publicly accessible and easily understandable.

“The next step is for the petition to be sent to the NSW Legislative Council.

We look forward to this process continuing, so we can uncover some of the flawed science and poor implementation that has led to some of the water management problems we are facing. We cannot see any other way for this to be achieved.”

Mrs Scoullar said it continues to become increasingly obvious that the Basin Plan has been botched and has the potential to go down in political history as one of our nation’s greatest failures.

However, there are political games being played which is stopping a general acknowledgement that we need decisive action to fix the mess that has been created.

“Politicians are not good at admitting mistakes. They are good at doing whatever is necessary to protect their own careers, even if the nation suffers.

“This is why the Royal Commission and National Water Register are so important.

We must expose the corruption, the flawed science and the consistent failure to deliver a plan which protects communities, food production and the environment.”