THE Labor Party’s plan to deliver 450 gigalitres in environmental water to South Australia has drawn criticism from independent MPs who opposed government buybacks to achieve the target.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese and shadow minister for environment and water Terri Butler pledged to deliver 450GL in environmental flows to the South Australian end of the Murray River while delivering Labor’s five-point plan for the Murray-Darling Basin in Adelaide last Friday.
Ms Butler said the decision to deliver 450GL in flows had been made as part of the $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan, signed in 2012, to return 3200GL of water to the environment by 2024.
“The 450 gigalitres is not a surprise, it has been in the plan all along,” Ms Butler said. “It’s part of the basis under which the states and other governments entered into this plan.”
Under the plan, 450GL in the environmental flows were outlined to be delivered, if there was no negative socioeconomic impact, to floodplains, and increase stream flows in the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth in South Australia.
Newly elected SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said the state had received two gigalitres of the 450GL target.
The Productivity Commission’s five-year assessment of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan noted there was “significant debate” between basin governments about having additional criteria to determine socioeconomic neutrality.
The basin plan outlined water-saving measures such as changing impediments to the delivery of water down the system, on-farm water-saving projects and using regulators and levees to deliver water to lakes and floodplains without overbank flooding or water loss.
While Labor has not released details about how the 450GL target will be achieved, Ms Butler did not rule out buybacks of water.
“We do not have a policy of compulsory acquisition of water,” Ms Butler said. “But I want to make very clear that we are not ruling out any tools to uphold the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.”
Independent candidate for Mallee Sophie Baldwin opposed buybacks, saying any effort to take water from irrigators would “decimate” agriculture in the region.
“Another 450GL of water taken out of productive agriculture means we lose 1.3 billion litres of milk production, 540,000 tonnes of rice, 900,000 tonnes of wheat, or 6.4 million tons of tomato,” Ms Baldwin said.
“If your thinking revolves around a volumetric number and not an outcome, then the numbers doomed from the start.”
NSW independent Member for Murray Helen Dalton said the Federal Government needed to focus any water-saving efforts on irrigators in the northern basin.
“Governments have come after southern Basin irrigators for buybacks but ignored so much of what happens further upstream,” Mrs Dalton said.
“Northern irrigators have taken trillions of litres of water without a licence or regulation (through floodplain harvesting).
“What we need is a comprehensive plan that seeks to look after people and the environment, rather than just chasing a number.”
Former NSW minister for water Melinda Pavey said in 2021 that NSW, which has 21 water-saving projects, was on track to achieve 75 per cent of its water-saving target by 2024.
Victorian Water Minister Lisa Neville told Sunraysia Daily in March the Commonwealth Government needed to “show flexibility” and extend the 2024 deadline for water saving to avoid buybacks.
Ms Butler said basin governments could “redouble their efforts” to deliver on the plan if they wished to “avoid the need for any further discussion of this issue”.
