Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (11:37): These aren't the only amendments that came from the government side. What we saw yesterday in the Senate, just on the day after the Deputy Prime Minister was sworn in, was that he and his party wasted no time in trying to trash the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. This is a member who could gatecrash his own party. That's what we've seen—a National Party member and now leader gatecrashing his own party and trashing the coalition. A Murray-Darling Basin plan is essential not just for good agricultural product but also for those communities in South Australia.

Government members interjecting—

Mr ALBANESE: I note a South Australian member is actually interjecting. I'd say that what he should do is interject against his National Party colleagues. The tail once again is trying to wag the dog. Of course, with the rise of the member for New England to be Deputy Prime Minister, there's been some discussion about what that means for the way that the government will operate and the way that this parliament will function. Well, spoiler alert: the Deputy Prime Minister is the spoiler, the great spoiler within the coalition. He is the great divider within the coalition, and we saw it. We saw the National Party have a meeting and, as Senator Canavan said on radio this morning, deliberately not tell their Liberal colleagues what they were going to do, because, as he said, their Liberal colleagues would have pulled the bill. So the National Party is plotting within the government against the government of which they are a part. If there's anything that exemplifies the chaos that we've seen this week, it is what occurred in the Senate last night. This has occurred at a time when we have absolute chaos, when it comes to the big challenge of this country.

Yesterday we heard the Prime Minister—the virtual Prime Minister on the screen over there—acknowledge that he had just two jobs. Well, he did have two jobs. He had the job of the rollout of the vaccine and fixing national quarantine. That should have been the priority, but what have we had this week? We've had a plot against the former Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Riverina, on the basis of 'no argument that he's done anything wrong; no argument at all'. They've queued up to say what a decent bloke he is. Between putting a spear in between the third and fourth ribs of the former Deputy Prime Minister, they've queued up to say what a good bloke he is and then gave him a standing ovation as he walked out the door. Well, the current Deputy Prime Minister didn't get a standing ovation when he had to resign in disgrace the last time he had the job, and he won't get a standing ovation from them the next time he has to leave, because his whole record in office is one of chaos.

What we saw last night in the Senate was chaos—government members moving amendments to their own legislation and then being rejected and then going out there on radio this morning spruiking as to why it was the case. We know that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is absolutely critical. As a former water shadow minister, I know exactly why this critical plan for Australia's food bowl as well as for the use of water in this country—particularly for the end users down the bottom there in South Australia—is absolutely critical to access to clean water. But what we have from this government is absolute chaos.

Government members interjecting—

Mr ALBANESE: And we've got Liberal Party members from South Australia defending this. (Extension of time granted) What we have now is a major test for this government: do they allow the National Party to keep the water portfolio? That's the big test for this government. We now know what the National Party think about water. They want to trash the centrepiece of water policy in this country, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan—the Murray Darling Basin Plan that has enjoyed widespread support, that has gone to election after election and has survived changes of government, but won't survive the chaos that has now infected this government. The infections around this country aren't confined to COVID-19; there's an infection over there—an infection of chaos and disunity that has spread from the National Party room onto the floor of the Senate and is now spreading onto the floor of the House of Representatives.

The fact is that this legislation is still very weak. There were a range of things that were promised by this government with respect to the inspector-general bill that we are dealing with here. In August 2019 the government announced 'a tough cop on the beat'. One of the things that they announced as part of that was that the inspector-general role—wait for this—was going to be able to report things to the Commonwealth integrity commission. What do you think the weakness in that is now? What's missing? There's no integrity commission. So we have a process to have an inspector-general to report things like when there are rorts. So why is it that there might be an issue here with the inspector-general, a national integrity commission, water and the Deputy Prime Minister—the current bloke?

What is it, do you think?

Mr Burke: There's a link!

Mr ALBANESE: What do you think the link is there? Why mightn't they want someone to closely examine the water buybacks that have been undertaken under this government, now that we have this Deputy Prime Minister, the bloke who'll sit in this chair at lunchtime? What do you reckon? I reckon there's another member as well, the member for Hume, who might be a bit interested in whether this gets a close examination or not.

The fact is that this is a government that doesn't have integrity. This is a government that is all about itself. We've seen it this week when, in the middle of a pandemic, they have prioritised stabbing rather than jabbing. They've prioritised stabbing a Deputy Prime Minister, a man of integrity, a man who doesn't have question marks over his buybacks and his personal involvement in these issues—a man whom, whilst I have substantial policy disagreements with him, there is no cloud over. You can't say that about his colleagues.

Opposition members interjecting—

Mr ALBANESE: You can't say that, can you? Their priority was to get rid of him and then to immediately flex their muscles and say: 'We're not really a part of the coalition. We don't care about South Australia. We don't care about proper use of water to maximise agricultural outputs whilst ensuring environmental sustainability. We don't care about having a national integrity commission. We're showing once again that we're just focused on ourselves.'

That's the problem for this mob opposite. They've been there for almost a decade now, for the best part of a decade, and they'll be asking for even more time. They are without a plan for the future—just a plan to wreck, not a plan to actually deal with the current challenge of COVID-19, let alone a plan to recover stronger. This has been a debacle of a final sitting week, a debacle that began with the stabbing of a man of integrity and his replacement with the bloke who has presided over this attack on a key part of our agriculture and water policy in this country.