Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:30): The 47 members of this place represent about 24,000 or 25,000 voters in our electorates, and the people in our electorates expect us to come in here and stand up for them. When you are lucky enough to be in government and you make it into the cabinet, the people of all those 47 electorates expect each and every one of those cabinet ministers to stand up not just for their electorate but for the entire state.

As someone who went to a lot of ministerial council meetings over five years, I have to say that the bullying that goes on from Victoria and New South Wales by those who do not believe anything exists outside those states, and the bullying that quite often goes on by federal ministers, is something that has to be seen. You have to be tough. You have to stand your ground and stick up for the constituents in your own electorate and the constituents in your state.

What have we seen? We have seen a minister, the Minister for Environment and Water, who has sold out our state and who has been called out by a royal commissioner for breaching the Ministerial Code of Conduct for the way he has gone about it. However, instead of being chastised by the Premier, the Premier comes out and says, 'It wasn't just his decision. We all sold out South Australia. We all sold out the River Murray.' This is one of the most disgraceful things I have ever seen in this place by a government minister, and for the Premier to come in and support him, to back up his minister, is a further disgrace.

If any of those backbenchers over there I have watched over the past two days think they are on a winner by sticking with their environment minister and their Premier, they know what is right. They are hearing what is happening, and I know there is disquiet amongst them. They should stand up because what people want and what people will vote for are individuals who come into this place who stand up for the citizens of South Australia.

We have an environment minister who thinks that he is a genius. He thinks that he is the only person who knows what is good for South Australia, that he is the only person who knows what is good for the River Murray. We did go in and stand up for the River Murray. We did go in and stand up for South Australia in the 16 years we were in power.

We have been giving concessions on the river for decades; we are the ones who have always been giving things up. When then premier Weatherill went to the federal government to negotiate a deal to get more money so that we could make our irrigators even more efficient and get those environmental flows, it was a deal about which the Liberal Party then said, 'You should just go for the Mazda,' when we were going for the Rolls-Royce. We stuck at it, we stuck at it and we stuck at it.

Now we have an environment minister who went to Canberra, got a few cuddles from people and was told, 'This will be good. This will be good for you, and this will be good for the people of South Australia.' Rubbish, what an absolute load of rubbish. He went to a ministerial council meeting, a place where I have explained that you have to be tough, where you have to stand up for South Australia, but he wanted the cuddles. He wanted to be seen as a hero at this ministerial council meeting, and he has been absolutely sold a pup.

When a royal commissioner comes out and calls him on that behaviour, what do they all do? They have a go at this royal commissioner and say that he is some sort of Labor Party stooge. This is an eminent lawyer who has represented Barnaby Joyce, who was then the deputy prime minister, in the High Court. We saw the Attorney-General prevent him from expanding his inquiry. We saw the Liberal Party block this inquiry at every possible chance—an inquiry, by the way, that should have been conducted by the federal government.

Of course, the Coalition, the federal government, because they are in bed with the cotton growers and the big irrigators of New South Wales and Queensland and Victoria, because they are in bed with all these big irrigators, will not go near it. No, they will not go near it because the Liberal Party and the National Party do not have the best interests of South Australia at heart.

This environment minister is too scared to turn up and face the music. On Saturday night, he was meant to turn up and deliver a speech in McLaren Vale. He welshed on that invitation. I tell you what: a lot of people at the Fleurieu Film Festival were extremely disappointed because they wanted to boo him. They wanted to heckle him because that is how people feel in the electorate of Mawson about what this guy has done to our river and to this state.

But did he turn up and face the music? No, he stayed home with his rabbit. We have an environment minister who has a rabbit called Princess Pancake. What bigger opponent do we have of our environment than the rabbit? This guy has a rabbit that the brought in from the Netherlands. This big-eared thing has its own Instagram account. What sort of environment minister has a rabbit as a pet and sells out our state and sells out the once mighty River Murray?