"For the Kahlbetzer family there will only ever be one Penny Wong . When the federal Water Minister needed a big deal to trumpet the government’s commitment to the Murray-Darling Basin, the family’s Twynam Pastoral Company was a willing seller.
What followed was the largest water trade in Australian history, a $303 million deal that was supposedly a win for taxpayers and the environment."
https://www.afr.com/news/politics/penny-s-from-heaven-for-water-sellers-20100330...paywalled
"In 2009, Senator the Hon Penny Wong, then Minister for Climate Change and Water, made the Water Market Rules (WMR) and Water Charge (Termination Fees) Rules (WCTFR).1 In 2010, the Hon Tony Burke MP, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, made the Water Charge (Infrastructure) Rules (WCIR) and the Water Charge (Planning and Management Information) Rules (WCPMIR) (collectively, the Rules).2 Compliance with the rules is monitored and enforced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Minister Burke made minor amendments to the WCTFR in February 2011 and further amendments to the WCTFR and the WMR in October 2012."
https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/ACCC%20Article%20in%20the%20SA%20Law%20Soci..."Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I rise to speak on behalf of the Labor Party on this disallowance motion and make clear that Labor will be voting to disallow this instrument. We do so because we support the plan; in fact, we're the party that delivered the plan. It was Labor that delivered the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in government and it is Labor that will fight today to save that plan—the whole plan, the entire plan—for all Australians."
"I would make this point, notwithstanding that very impassioned speech by Senator Hanson-Young:
the one party that has not supported the plan, and did not support it when we implemented it in government, is the Greens. They didn't support the plan at the time and, I have to say on this, have been happy to grandstand but have never delivered a single drop to the River Murray. When Senator Hanson-Young goes out in the media and calls on me and other Labor Party senators to stand firm on the River Murray, I would remind people listening that the Greens didn't support the plan and they've never delivered a single drop of water. They continue to lecture me and others in this place about the need to enforce a plan they have never supported. I tell you who did deliver the water, and that is the Labor government. I am proud that as water minister in that government between 2007 and 2010 I secured almost a thousand gigalitres of water for the river, something for which I have been criticised, to this day, by the National Party and various irrigation communities, perhaps even by you, Mr Acting Deputy President Williams—as you're entitled to do, but I do make that point. It was something that was hard fought and remains hard fought."
https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?id=2018-02-14.247.2responding to SHY who said -
"Despite all of this, we have a regulation before us in this place that suggests the Murray-Darling Basin Plan should be amended to take more water out of the river, to take more water off the environment and to hand it to big corporate irrigators upstream."
So Penny Wong, on behalf of the Labor Party supported the move to take more water and was against the Green's motion.