The revived Trans-Pacific Partnership must be heavily scrutinised through a Senate inquiry before any legislation passes the Parliament, The Australian Greens say.

“The trickling of information about this revived TPP raises more questions than it answers, and The Greens will move to refer it to a Senate Inquiry,” Greens Trade spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

The Australian Greens are calling for an independent audit of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, including where taxpayers’ money has been spent and how much water has actually been returned to the river, following the Senate last night agreeing to the Greens’ move to block handing over more water to big corporate irrigators.

The Australian Greens’ push to stop billions of litres of water from being stripped from the environment to feather the nests of greedy corporate irrigators has won the backing of Labor and some crossbench senators, passing the Senate tonight.

“We’ve cleared the first hurdle on the road to restoring the Murray Darling Basin Plan back to what it was meant to be; security for the river, and for the environment to get what it needs to survive,” Greens Murray Darling Basin spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

It is deeply disappointing that the majority of senators have turned their backs on vulnerable Australians by voting down a motion calling for the phasing out of poker machines in pubs and clubs, the Australian Greens say.

“With hundreds of thousands of Australians at risk of harmful gambling addiction, it’s a travesty that senators, excluding the Nick Xenophon Team, have voted down a Greens’ motion to tackle predatory gambling.

The Australian Greens have reaffirmed their commitment to the survival of the Murray Darling Basin, calling on crossbenchers and Labor to hold the line against threats from upstream states amid new scandalous information that further undermines the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Australian Greens Murray-Darling Basin spokesperson and Senator for South Australia Sarah Hanson-Young is urging her SA colleagues to hold firm on defending the River Murray amid news that the Labor Party is in talks with the Government over changes to the Murray Darling Basin Plan that would reduce the amount of environmental water.

Today’s revelations that South Australia has been sold down the river about how much water it would lose if the Government’s change to the Murray Darling Basin Plan are further proof why the Plan should not be scaled back, The Australian Greens say.

“Big irrigators and upstream states are always claiming that South Australia is too far downstream for anything to matter – that’s just not true,” Greens Murray Darling Basin spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

The Australian Greens have slammed the Turnbull Government for allowing loopholes that gets Foxtel out of a blanket ban on playing gambling advertising during live sports, and broadcasters playing gambling ads during pre-game entertainment.

“Last year, the Government claimed they’d struck a deal with broadcasters to ban gambling ads during sport broadcasts. We now see the legislation to enforce this shows not all broadcasters are treated equally,” Greens media spokesperson Senator Hanson-Young said.

Today’s intervention by prominent scientists and economists warning that the roll-out of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is failing should be a wakeup call to Canberra that the health of the nation’s biggest river system is not going to recover without urgent and bold action, Australian Greens Murray Darling Basin spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

The Australian Greens will move to legislate raising the guaranteed minimum hours of subsidised early childhood education in an effort to help more parents get back into the workforce, and give children the best start they can get.