He was joined by Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham and fellow Nationals Senator Fiona Nash.

Ms Nash has wielded a sustained attack on the opposition, criticising mishandling of the process, since the Murray Darling Basin Authority released its guide to a draft basin plan on October 8.

Mr Joyce said it was “the most absurd process that had come before this parliament”.

He said that included the consultation period following the guide basin plan’s release.

Mr Joyce also pointed to “the almost riot-like conditions and the fact that we are getting legal opinions after the fact”.

“People were absolutely livid to think that you could deliver such hurt to regional Australia - that you would go to people in towns and say, ‘We will pull the economic rug out from under you so that the value of your house is taken away’ and that you would go to people in businesses and say, ‘We will take the sustenance out of your community so that your business will be without purpose’.”

Senator Nash said the process was “an absolute shambles” and had been so from day one.

“It took them six months to get to a water policy and 18 months to actually establish the Murray-Darling Basin Authority,” she said.

“It has taken them 36 months to get to any kind of understanding that there needs to be a proper analysis of the social and economic impact.

“How can that minister not understand or have any input into the interpretation of the act that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority was working under?

“Here we are in October 2010, and he has to go off and get some advice on what the Act might mean.”

Striking back, Victorian Labor Senator David Feeney said the Murray-Darling Basin was a crisis inherited from the previous government, just as they inherited it.

“In fact, we inherited it from every Federal and State Government of the past 100 years,” he said.

“It is a crisis that results from the chronic unwillingness of previous governments over many decades to face up to facts and to take the necessary steps to secure the future of the basin, its environment and its people.

“The root cause of the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin is the fact that for decades we have been taking more water out of the river system than rainfall has been putting into it.

“The opposition is not willing to face the fact that many of the water use practices in the basin are simply unsustainable.”