2019-01-31
Today we’ve seen the SA Murray Darling Basin Royal Commission deliver a stinging indictment of a plan that has become a multi-billion dollar environmental disaster for our nation.
The Murray Darling is our nation’s food bowl. The river is central to Aboriginal culture. It has outstanding environmental significance and is a key water source for South Australia - including many regional towns and cities.
Right now, our climate breakdown is putting huge stress on this precious place. But rather than take climate action, the Coalition are too busy doing the bidding of their corporate donors.
The Murray Darling Basin Plan could go down as one of the biggest National Party rorts we have ever seen.
$13 billion of taxpayers' money was meant to go towards saving the river. Instead, the Murray Darling is in crisis and big corporate irrigators are lining their pockets.
This is precisely why we need a national anti-corruption commission.
Now the SA Royal Commission has reported its findings, and the failure of policy and government has been laid bare, there is no choice other than a Federal Royal Commission to properly investigate this matter.
Let’s be very clear. The Australian Greens are the only party that has opposed the Murray Darling Basin Plan from the outset, when it was clear that it put profit and special interests ahead of science and the environment,
This is a plan that has ignored climate change, in spite of the pervasive and immediate threat it poses across the country.
Only the Greens have a plan for where we go from here. We will:
- Establish a national royal commission
- Overhaul the Murray Darling Basin Plan, and put the environment at the centre
- Ensure that any future modelling is done in the context of climate change
- Ban corporate irrigator donations to political parties - including the Nationals
- Ensure that any new plan delivers water buybacks to ensure proper environmental flows