Doorstop interview at Canberra with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek
SUBJECTS: 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF BALI BOMBINGS; MURRAY-DARLING BASIN MINISTERIAL COUNCIL MEETING.
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER, TANYA PLIBERSEK: Just before we get into today's meeting I want to acknowledge that today is the 20th anniversary of the Bali Bombings and there will be families right around Australia today who are really grieving. it's important that as a nation we stop and acknowledge that. It's not just Australians who were killed in that tragic event, to the people of Bali and those other countries that hard nationals caught up in that tragedy, our thoughts are with them as well.
I was very fortunate when I was recently in Bali for a conference to be able to go to the memorial garden in the Consulate and to pay my respects there and again this morning of course we have a memorial in the Parliament House gardens and stopping there, seeing the list of Australians who lost their lives is a reminder of the scale of this tragedy and the number of people who will be grieving today.
On the Murray-Darling Basin Water Ministers Meeting, can I say I am absolutely delighted to be here with ministerial colleagues from the Murray-Darling Basin states and the ACT to work on how we will deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
The Plan is coming up to its 10th birthday soon, and it has really achieved a lot. I think it's important to acknowledge that a lot has been achieved and during the last drought we saw some of the benefits of those early achievements.
But the truth is, in recent times, progress on the Plan has stalled. It stalled because the previous government under the Liberals and Nationals deliberately sabotaged the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Not only were they on a go slow, it wasn't just incompetence. What we saw from the previous government was a program of sabotaging of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
So we still have quite a bit to achieve through the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and these last stages of the Plan will be some of the most challenging to deliver. That's why it's so important that ministers have come today, I hope in the spirit of cooperation, of collaboration, of creativity, because as a Commonwealth Government we are determined that we will deliver in full on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We are determined to deliver the Plan in full but we need to work creatively and collaboratively on how we achieve that.
We are back. We are prepared to show leadership. We are prepared to invest. We are prepared to cooperate and work hard on the delivery of the Plan but that will require the states and the ACT as well to do their share.
JOURNALIST: Given that South Australia has withdrawn its support for the socioeconomic criteria agreed to at MinCo in 2018, will the Commonwealth withdraw financial support for that state?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well we've made it very clear that we're determined to deliver on the Plan in full and how we get there is going to require some creativity and some collaboration. The simple truth is that many of the measures introduced by the previous Commonwealth Government was simply brown tape. They were introduced and designed to prevent progress on delivering the objectives of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Any government, any state government, any Commonwealth government would consider the social and economic impacts of any measure we take when we're delivering on the plan.
What we're not prepared to do is get caught up in bureaucracy and brown tape that is designed to stop delivery of the plan, not facilitate it.
JOURNALIST: Have you costed or asked bureaucrats the cost to the budget of voluntary water buy-backs?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I've said from the very beginning there's no news here, I've said from the very beginning that voluntary buy-backs are on the table. Everything, every tool has to be on the table. We won't achieve our environmental objectives unless we're prepared to do something different to what's been going on for the last nine years.