Questioning from Senator Joyce today at Senate Estimates displayed clearly the problems with the Water Act 2007 and Labor's approach to the Murray-Darling Basin.

"The government continually refused to be drawn on whether the Act could provide an equally weighted consideration of economic, social and environmental factors.*

If they are so confident of their view on the Act why doesn't the Government release the "hundreds of pages" of legal advice that the Government has requested.

"We then had the complete contradiction in clear evidence by the Department who repeatedly said that they did not even take into account economic and social considerations before buying back water.**

"This blindfolded approach has already cost Collarenebri its cotton gin and effectively shut down the economic base of that town.

"When the question was asked as to what socio-economic factors were taken into account, in fact even Minister Conroy said the buybacks were consistent with the "legislation".

"Collarenebri is a living example of how Labor simply ignores socio-economic factors in practice while paying them lip service in public.

"The only way that we can provide certainty on the future of the Murray-Darling Basin is for the government to release all legal advice, undertake to take a proper investigation of the Act and get it right now."

*JOYCE: You keep saying it you have to consider it, you have to take it into consideration, you have to observe it, you have to do a whole range of things but of course what you are not saying is that they are of equivalence [economic, social and environmental factors]?

FREEMAN (CEO, Murray-Darling Basin Authority): I am not saying they are not equivalent, what I am saying I think the idea of equivalence I have some difficulty inworking out what that means.

** HARWOOD: Under the water purchase program, the parameters which we assess is, is the water licensed, is the water needed, that is on offer can it be used to address an environmental need, can the water against that licence be delivered to meet that need and does the offer represent value for money. Those are the characteristics we assess on the offers made to us …

JOYCE: … You didn’t mention socio-economic conditions there once