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Patricia Karvelas challenges Littleproud’s Covid reasoning behind the Murray-Darling Basin delays on ABC RN this morning.
“This isn’t a new problem … Your government was in power when a 2019 Productivity Commission report warned that there had been limited progress returning the water to the environment,” she says. “Why didn’t you change course?”
This is a very technical piece of legislation … The 450 is additional to the 2,750 gigalitres of water in the plan, the Productivity Commission looked at the 450 gigalitres, there’s only been 2 gigalitres recovered on the 450 …
Because the neutrality test on social and economic impact on rural communities have not been passed to get more water back out of it – that’s a test the Labor government put in place, that we adhere to that the states agreed to.
He [is] going down a path that’s divided the country and meant that the attention has been taken away from managing people’s cost-of-living crisis, and focused on trying to win a referendum in which he has overreached in conflating a voice with constitutional recognition.
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