WATER buybacks are going to hurt city shoppers at the checkout, a Mallee forum has been told.
More than 60 irrigators attended a meeting in Mildura on Tuesday to discuss proposed amendments to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Members of the Coalition’s agriculture backbench committee joined Member for Mallee Anne Webster and Opposition water spokesperson Perin Davey for the two-hour meet.
Ms Davey said the Senate standing committee on environment and communications, of which she is a member, will hold two hearings on the proposed amendments, both in Canberra.
“I took forward a motion to the Senate to require the committee to come and hear from the communities that will most be impacted by these amendments,” Ms Davey said.
“The Senate rejected that motion, they voted against it.
“I’m very grateful to my colleagues who have set time aside to come and listen to the communities directly.”
Meetings were held in Shepparton on Monday, Renmark and Mildura on Tuesday, Griffith on Wednesday and Moree on Thursday.
Dr Webster, who attended in Renmark and Mildura, said the government description of water buybacks as an option to “willing sellers” is a misnomer.
“When you’ve got farmers on their knees because of commodity prices or because of other issues including workforce shortages … it becomes a need, a necessity to sell,” Dr Webster said.
“It’s not because they’re willing sellers.”
Agriculture backbench committee chair Rowan Ramsey said buybacks would decimate communities that rely on the river to irrigate their crops.
“I absolutely believe we have to protect the financial integrity of those communities, give them a chance for the football clubs, for the kindergartens, for the schools to all thrive,” Mr Ramsey said.
“You can’t do that if you keep pulling the economy to pieces.”
Committee secretary Matt Canavan said the government stirred up a hornet’s nest by bringing water buybacks back into the equation.
“The arithmetic here is very simple – if farmers have less water, they’ll grow less food, and that will mean higher prices for all Australians,” Mr Canavan said.
Water Minister Tanya Plibersek has said the government was “offering more time, more options, more funding and more accountability” to complete the Basin Plan.
“I do believe we can do this in a way that minimises impacts in regional communities,” she told the ABC last month.
“I know regional communities have really done a lot already towards the achievement of the plan.
“More than 80 per cent of water that has been recovered towards the plan was done when Labor was last in government; only about 16 per cent has been recovered in the last 10 years.”
The Senate standing committee on environment and communications will finalise a report on the amendment Bill by November 8.
STRONG FEEDBACK
WHAT community members said to the Coalition’s agriculture backbench committee during the Mildura forum:
On water buybacks …
“It’s made it bloody hard for us and the last thing we want is more buybacks, it’s just bloody ridiculous.”
– Gannawarra Shire economic development manager Roger Griffiths
“If the government of the day think that taking 450GL out of the system won’t impact the food production in this region, then they’re kidding themselves.”
– Sunraysia irrigator Greg Milner
“If people in the cities were aware that this issue of taking 450GL out of the food producing regions would affect them at the checkout, I think you’d have a bit more success.”
– Lower Murray Water strategic advisory committee chair Frank Dimasi
“You’ve got to find an alternative to them rather than just oppose them, which I don’t imagine that in a political context that there’d be support to abandon the plan.”
– Former Lower Darling citrus grower Alan Whyte
On environmental water …
“As politicians, I think you should have learned from COVID, the whole lot of you … environmental water must be measured not modelled.”
– Central Murray Environmental Floodplains Group chair Geoff Kendall
“Where’s the science? I think there needs to be a review to actually go back and check the science, check the numbers and check the outcomes.”
– Gannawarra Shire chief executive Geoff Rollinson
“I think we need more storages, you people decide the best place to put them … there’s heaps of water there, it’s just we don’t store it and save it.”
– Sunraysia irrigator Laurie Fry
