Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012

The majority voted against a Nationals amendment introduced by Senator Barnaby Joyce, the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate.

Senator Joyce argues that there should be "a balance between socioeconomic and environmental outcomes".(Read Senator Joyce's whole contribution and the associated debate here. The debate on this amendment, called the Nationals amendment numbers (1) and (2) on sheet 7336, began at 11:16 am. ) This amendment supports this by requiring that the objective of "enhanc[ing] the environmental outcomes that can be achieved by the Basin Plan" be pursued "while achieving neutral or beneficial socio-economic outcomes".(Read a copy of the bill here. The amendment was to add these quoted words at the end of subsection 86AA(1). ) Further, it adds an additional way to enhance these environmental outcomes by "(i) investing in water efficient infrastructure and other on-farm works".(This new subsection would have been added to the end of subsection 86AA(2), which you can see here. )

Background to the bill

The bill(A copy of the bill, its explanatory memoranda and amendments are available here. ) was introduced to establish an Environment Special Account to fund projects that protect and restore environmental assets of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) and protect water dependent biodiversity of the MDB.(Read more about the bill in this bills digest (696 KB).) The projects will include those that increase the available environmental water in the MDB by 450 Gigalitres.

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