Good morning Tony, good morning Keith, listeners. Look, Minister Wong is being particularly misleading when it comes to Tony Abbott’s plan for a referendum, quite misleading. Nobody wants to wait until 2013, nobody hopes that we have to leave it ’til then to resolve once and for all management issues in the Basin but that’s what Tony wants, is to at least resolve those management issues in the Basin. (Keith Conlon: You can understand…) … doesn’t want to wait ’til then. (Conlon: You can understand the urgency issue, so are you saying that there’ll be a referendum attached maybe to the coming Federal election?) Well, that, of course, if we could get it through the Parliament, would be wonderful but the Opposition doesn’t have the numbers that would require the Government to support a proposal to do that. (Tony Pilkington: Senator, what’s your thinking would a referendum get up?) Well I think people right across Australia understand this issue needs to be resolved; the health of the Basin in the long term management needs to be resolved. (Conlon: Can you imagine the campaign in New South Wales and Victoria I mean they are going to chuck everything at it, and say, ‘they’ll take our water, they’ll nick our water’… it’s got two chances, hasn’t it?) No, not at all, Keith, I think it has a real chance but the important thing is, we’ve said, we are committed to resolving long term management of the Basin, we are committed to resolving it in the national interest for the health of the Basin but it will maintain with an independent Authority, that we will make sure, though… that that Authority has the powers to implement its plans. No point Minister Wong saying ‘we’ve legislated to have a national plan’, we want to make sure that independent Authority can also implement its plan, not just develop it. (Conlon: Thanks very much Simon Birmingham, who is the Coalition’s Murray Darling spokesperson.)