A WHO’S WHO in agriculture joined leaders, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, at the Bush Summit in Griffith.
Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek said she realised that some people feel that Australians in the city and the country don’t understand each other.
“And that’s why, as Water Minister, I wanted to be here in Griffith, and have a conversation with you about my thinking – and the government’s thinking – on water,” she said in her keynote address on August 26.
“Because towns in this region were built on the promise of irrigation.
“I want to make this clear: irrigation has been a great thing for this country.
“No one wants to turn that around – any more than we would want to stop the Murrumbidgee in its tracks at Wagga Wagga and send it back east.
“But as Minister for Water, I have responsibility for the entire basin system, now and into the future.
“And I have a responsibility to be honest about the challenges we face.
“It’s my job to prepare us for the next dry stretch – when the rain stops falling and the rivers start shrinking and water again becomes our most precious resource.”
Ms Plibersek reaffirmed the government’s decision to deliver the basin plan in full, including an additional 450 gigalitres on top of the 2100GL of environmental water that had already been sourced for the environment.
“I know some people in this room oppose that promise,” Ms Plibersek said.
“I don’t expect you to agree with us – but I do ask you to understand our position.
“The Murray-Darling Basin Plan wasn’t written to help us in the good years.
“It was written during and after the Millennium Drought. When inflows to the Murray-Darling fell to their lowest level on record.”
Ms Plibersek, who has recently toured both the southern and northern basin, said water management “is only going to get harder in this country”.
“Rainfall patterns are changing, temperatures are changing,” she said.
“Climate change means that, on average, we’ll get more rain in northern Australia and less rain in the south-east.
“Which means that basin river flows could decline by as much as 30 per cent by 2050.
“That’s why we’re committed to the full plan, including the additional 450GL.
“We’re determined to deliver the water, but we’re not going to be zealots about how we get there.
“I don’t share any of the taboos held by the last government around water recovery. And I don’t believe in wrapping the plan up in brown tape.
“We’ll be creative. We’ll be consultative. But we won’t block projects for political or ideological reasons.”
Ms Plibersek announced a new water efficiency project at the Nap Nap station, west of Hay.
“Water policy is never easy in Australia,” she said.
“As Mark Twain said: whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.”
Member for Murray Helen Dalton said the summit was a highlight for Griffith and the region, although as the local state member elected on a platform of agriculture and water, she was disappointed to not be part of the panel discussion on water.
“All tiers of government need to be involved in the water conversation … I don’t want to see another single drop of water leave the productive pool and I don’t support buybacks,” Mrs Dalton said.
Member for Farrer and Deputy Liberal Leader Sussan Ley said irrigators were “very, very” concerned about the future of water for growing of food and fibre.
“And a lot of the people who come to Griffith that haven’t been here before, and they look at the main street and they talk to the locals, and they go to a restaurant, and they feel the vibrancy and the rich texture of generations of people who’ve built their lives here,” she said at the summit.
“But, it is all built on water.
“And I’m concerned because I’ve heard the incoming government making some quite alarming statements about the future of the reliability of water for this district and our people.”
Ms Ley said the possibility of water buybacks was “incredibly concerning”.
“I was part of that in the incoming 2013 government because we saw what Labor’s buybacks did to these communities, in the previous Labor Government,” she said. “And the hurt and the pain and the consequences are still being felt today.
“We can’t go there again. We need to know that this government has our back.
“We heard Anthony Albanese talk about having our back this morning, and it’s easy to make top line, broad messages that sound positive but, I’m sorry, we need some detail.
“We need to know, and if that 450 is brought back, or the socio-economic considerations that we carefully put around its recovery are removed, then that is a kick in the guts to every single farmer and every single community member in these communities of the Riverina and also in the Murray. It should sound real alarm bells.”
