CANBERRA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) has promised to launch an inquiry into the government's controversial water buybacks if it wins May's general election.
Campaigning in the state of Queensland on Wednesday, ALP leader Bill Shorten said that his party would establish a judicial inquiry with the powers of a royal commission into the 2017 transactions.
"This is an acknowledgment there's something suspicious about water buybacks conducted by this government," he told reporters, according to The Australian Financial Review.
"We don't think this should be a long or expensive inquiry but the people are owed the truth.
"There is a pattern of events with this government which goes to a very fundamental question about their honesty in administering money and a commission of inquiry is exactly the right way to go."
The governing Liberal-National Party coalition (LNP) has come under pressure to explain the purchase of 28.7 gigaliters of water from two Queensland properties for 78.9 million Australian dollars (55.4 million U.S. dollars).
The two properties were owned by Eastern Australia Agriculture, the parent company of which was co-founded by Energy Minister Angus Taylor but he said he retained no links after entering the parliament.
Barnaby Joyce, the deputy prime minister and water minister at the time of the buyback, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that he had "nothing absolutely at all to hide."
In a statement on Wednesday, the ALP's Environment and Water spokesperson Tony Burke said they had not "received a satisfactory response" to questions about the purchases made during Joyce's tenure.
