One Nation MPs back Murray plan rejected by SA Leader
Four One Nation pollies have voted to support the same Murray-Darling Basin plan slammed by their leader a few weeks ago.
One Nation’s four lower house MPs have voted with the Labor and Liberal parties on the Murray-Darling Basin plan, despite leader Cory Bernardi speaking against the plan earlier this month.
Lower House MPs Chantelle Thomas, David Paton, Jason Virgo and Robert Roylance have voted to support the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which includes returning 450GL of environmental water to SA.
It comes after Bernardi tried to amend the motion in the upper house earlier this month, saying that One Nation instead wanted “a 1,500-gigalitre cap on water buybacks” and called for a national Royal Commission into the rollout of the Basin Plan.
“One Nation has a very clear proposition that we do not think the buybacks should be continuing,” Bernardi told the Legislative Council.
While Party President and fellow MLC Carlos Quaremba lashed the motion, telling the Murray Pioneer that the motion represented “uniparty arrogance and collusion… on full display”.
Environment Minister Emily Bourke claimed the lower house MPs have “defied their state and federal leader” showing division in the far-right party.
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“It’s only taken a few months for extreme divisions within One Nation to bubble to the surface,” she said.
“Now One Nation MPs are defying Pauline Hanson, Cory Bernardi and Barnaby Joyce to condemn their own water policy.”
But One Nation leader Cory Bernardi said after his amendments were unsuccessful, his lower house members had his “100 per cent” support to vote differently today.
“To characterise this as voting differently in the respective chambers is completely misleading,” Bernardi told InDaily.
“We tried to amend the motion in the upper house to reflect the reality of the Murray-Darling Basin agreement and where it needs to improve in the interest of South Australian communities.
“I highlighted those concerns and improvements in my speech. Our efforts were unsuccessful, so the motion passed on the voices.
“One Nation SA always prioritises the interests of South Australians and the communities”.
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When asked if this was a case of political point-scoring given the MPs had Bernardi’s support, Bourke said: “I don’t think anything when it comes to the River Murray is about political point scoring”.
“When it comes to the river, we should all fight for one key thing, and that is South Australia,” she said.
The SA Conservation Council had been urging One Nation members Roylance and Virgo from regional seats of Hammond and MacKillop to “stand with their constituents on the plan rather than siding with their federal members like Barnaby Joyce” as the basin plan is also debated in Canberra this month.
The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is an agreement between the federal and state governments to share river water.
Farmers with licences granted by the states can take water from rivers within the Murray–Darling system, which flows from Queensland through to NSW, Victoria and South Australia.
The plan includes legislated targets on recovering water for the environment through a buyback scheme.
Bernardi later praised South Australia’s farmers for being among the best in the world “despite so much being stacked against them”.
“Government policies – net zero, massive over-regulation, water theft – have made it so much harder for farmers to operate profitably. Labor has been fighting an undeclared war on farmers and the Liberals have been too weak to stand up for them,” he said.
He claimed One Nation had always supported the Basin Plan.
“We just want to restore the balance that was destroyed by Labor and the Greens three years ago,” Bernardi said.
“We only want acknowledgement that SA’s irrigators and river communities have paid a very high price to deliver the Basin Plan – a price they’re still paying; a price that’s still increasing every time Labor’s obsession with net zero drives up the price of electricity needed to pump and pressurise water.”
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