Mr JOHN COBB (3:03 PM) —My question certainly follows on from that statement. My question is also to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Yesterday the minister claimed that he would not attend community briefings on the Murray-Darling Basin guide because he did not want to be ‘looking over the shoulder of an independent inquiry’. As the minister is now meeting with irrigator peak groups in the familiar surrounds of Canberra and as this is the great moral dilemma of our time, why won’t he travel to meet face to face with irrigators at one of the remaining 19 community briefings in the basin?

Mr BURKE (Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) —Last Friday I did exactly what the honourable member described. I went and met with irrigators, as I will continue to do. What I will not do is decide that when an independent authority are conducting consultation on their own independent document it is somehow the time for me to be popping up. In the question reference was made to meetings that I am having with irrigators tonight. I met with the New South Wales Irrigators Council yesterday. More meetings—that have been referred to in the question—are taking place tonight. This is no different to the meetings that have been taking place for as long as I have been a minister in this House and that I have continued since I became the minister for water.

The work of the authority has to be conducted independently, but ultimately the document that is called the plan is the one that has the involvement at a ministerial level. So I will be making sure the whole way through that there is a very direct involvement, and the consultation of me being physically out there is how I have done my job the whole time that I have been a minister.

In terms of dealing with this draft document let us not forget that there is only one side of parliament in this room that made a commitment to implement the draft plan. Those were the words of the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition has so much confidence in the independence of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority that he was not even willing to wait until we got to the final consultation period. He was not willing to wait for any of that. He was going to take the draft and implement that. We will allow them to conduct their independent consultation—

Mr John Cobb interjecting—

The SPEAKER —The member for Calare!

Mr BURKE —and that will not stop me as minister consistently being involved in direct consultation in my role.