Southern Riverina Irrigation lobby group Speak Up has welcomed the recent Mildura Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council outcome, saying it provided a “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Spokesperson, Shelley Scoullar said the announcement from federal Water minister Barnaby Joyce there would be no more water buybacks was a “great relief.
“Additional buybacks have the ability to decimate rural communities. We simply cannot take more water out of productive use,” Ms Scoullar said. “We know there is a long way to go before we have a balanced Basin Plan that protects the environment, but not at huge cost to the social and economic fabric of rural and regional communities,” she said.
“But after years of battling, lobbying and sometimes a high level of frustration, we at least have some positive signs.”
She said she hoped the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) would start accepting Basin Plan adjustments were needed. Ms Scoullar said she also hoped it would fulfil its role as an independent authority, working with - and advising – communities and governments on the best pathway forward.
She said it appeared the massive economic impost on Australia’s regions and nation was finally being understood by some politicians.
“It appears most of the Ministers are starting to listen and I am cautiously optimistic they are developing a more genuine attempt to protect our communities,” Ms Scoullar said.
She was also buoyed by acknowledgment that complementary measures were needed to achieve environmental outcomes, and that the impact on communities needed to be considered in a broad context.
Ms Scoullar said the next important step needed to be an acceptance by South Australia of its need to play a more proactive role in the Basin Plan’s implementation.
“Rather than the ‘take, take, take’ that we have seen from the South Australians.
“They need to start becoming more involved in solutions which care for the environment and protect communities, including their own.
“Start working with eastern states and we can have better outcomes for everyone,” Ms Scoullar said.
Meanwhile, food producers in the NSW Murray region have welcomed calls for legislative amendments to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan from Farrer Liberal MP Sussan Ley.
Ms Ley told federal Parliament the proposed 450 gigalitres of additional ‘up-water’ should be paused.
No further work should be done in anticipation of increased flows “unless and until we see that it is needed and it can be delivered”.
She said she would call for an amendment for the Basin Plan, to lock in a cap on recovered water of 2,100 gigalitres.
Ms Ley added she would “be writing to the minister (Barnaby Joyce) and the MDBA recommending further discussions at ministerial council level about these two important legislative amendments”.
Southern Riverina Irrigators Chairman Graeme Pyle said hard-working food producers, who were trying to transition Australia from a ‘mining boom’ to a ‘dining boom’, supported Ms Ley’s stance.
Ms Ley explained to parliament that under the Basin Plan “we are in the process of finalising the projects that will provide 650 gigalitres of offsets to bridge the gap between the total diversion limit of 2,750 gigalitres and that water that has been brought back already.”
Mr Pyle said projects had to involve sensible and realistic decisions, which included complementary measures such as fish ways and carp control.
Hydrology alone would not deliver environmental outcomes.
Mr Pyle said it appeared there was very slowly, and very surely, an increasing recognition of the folly around the Basin Plan.
“Ms Ley and some of her parliamentary colleagues are recognising that we have no structure around water that has been recovered for environmental flows.
“We don’t know how much water is needed, or how much damage these huge volumes of environmental flows are causing.
“We’ve had fish kills, an explosion in carp numbers, river bank slumping and flood damage. What is the true level of unintended consequences of these flows?”
