SWAN Hill farmer and conservationist Peta Thornton believes the Victorian Government needs to “come to the table” and opt in to the MDBP agreement for the benefit of basin communities.
While the others have agreed to work with the Commonwealth on the new agreement, Victoria Water Minister Harriet Shing told the ABC that the state had already significantly contributed to the 450GL and would not support the new deal.
“Victoria has a longstanding opposition to buybacks, and nothing we have seen in this deal has changed that position,” she said.
But Ms Thornton believes that the Victorian Government is doing more harm than good by not being involved.
“In our municipality, we’ve got places like Nyah and Tresco – small piped-irrigation districts that need to be modernised.
“Without investment from the Federal Government that might be on the table through the basin plan, that is one less source of funding that we have, and it’s the customers that are going to pay for having to modernise and do that work,” she said.
“So it is going to be really costly without the Federal Government at the table.”
Ms Thornton said she is very “open-minded” when it comes to different methods of water recovery, and believes buybacks are an efficient and cost-effective way to return water to the environment, but there needs to be community consultation.
“The bottom line is that there is a law and it says that we are going to recover water, and so I think we should be a bit more open-minded about how we get the water, and I think that that should really involve deep consultation with communities – sort of like a co-design approach where communities sit down together and work out how water is being used in their communities and how they might meet water-recovery targets using all the different methods that are available,” she said.
“As an entitlement holder, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to sell my water back to the government for the environment. I mean I can sell my water tomorrow to another water user, so I would like the opportunity to have that freedom to do one or the other if I so choose.”
Ms Plibersek said the door remained open for Victoria to participate in the agreement.
“To walk away from this, to me, closes off a lot of opportunities for regional communities,” Ms Thornton said.
“It’s sort of just being a little bit too political, a little bit too binary – we are better off getting down together, talking, and sorting out the best way we can move forward together.”
