THE Albanese Government has allocated more than $100 million in the Federal Budget for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan review, as it is legislatively required to do.
This review needs to be conducted before any further water recovery is considered. There are major flaws in the Basin Plan, including the fact that if we proceed as originally proposed well over a decade ago, we will end up with massive amounts of environmental water stored in dams, but unable to be delivered downstream without causing more floods.
We do not want a repeat of last year’s flooding devastation, but that is the risk from storing too much water, because when we get excessive rains, the dams overflow.
Additionally, under the current Basin Plan we risk a significant reduction in food production, leading to higher prices at the supermarket.
It is important that the Basin Plan review is not conducted by the MDBA and those who developed it, as they are unlikely to take an objective view and acknowledge the many errors in its modelling.
Instead, we need independent minds who are prepared to genuinely consider the best ways to manage our scarce water resources in a manner that protects people, communities and the environment. This will require a fresh approach.
In fact, the government needs a fresh approach to numerous aspects of regional Australia, having again shown in the budget that it has little understanding of how the national economy operates, its reliance on regional prosperity, and how increasing costs in regional Australia have a flow-on effect to cost of living in the cities.
An example is the six per cent increase in the Heavy Vehicle Road User Charge, which will be a massive impost for our nation’s transport sector. Doesn’t the treasurer realise that if it costs more to transport food supplies to Sydney’s supermarkets, the cost of that food will have to increase on the shelves, placing us under even more inflationary pressure.
There was nothing in the budget to provide optimism for regional communities, from the cuts to vital infrastructure projects to insufficient road funding and no action to address worker shortages.
While Prime Minister Albanese may tell us that “no-one will be left behind”, it seems his ‘no-one’ only refers to those who live in capital cities.
Vicki Meyer
Deniliquin, NSW
