TANYA Plibersek has shot a missile from the Canberra jungle, risking the entire horticultural production along the Murray Darling system.
Standing in Adelaide last week, the Water Minister who accuses others of ‘guerilla warfare’ in the Murray-Darling Basin, announced proposed amendments to the basin plan to buy 450 gigalitres of water from farmers.
This volume of 450GL is basically the Sydney Harbour flowing down the Murray-Darling system.
The minister is canning the vital and formerly bipartisan socio-economic neutrality test, which means she doesn’t care how much harm the buybacks cause our irrigation communities and industries.
My Nationals colleagues along the Murray-Darling Basin are intercepting Labor’s buyback missile.
On Thursday we held crisis talks with industry peak bodies and together we will make it clear that these devastating buybacks are not acceptable.
The Coalition’s focus in government was on water efficient infrastructure so that irrigated agriculture and horticulture could continue.
Labor can’t do the math on the income and wellbeing that local communities lose when farms sell their water.
City-based Labor MPs read from Minister Plibersek’s talking points because they do not comprehend the thousands of gigalitres and billions of dollars’ income annually that have already left the basin.
The total amount of water sought is the equivalent to mothballing the entire Sunraysia region – think about it in those terms as the decimation of the industry, which has already suffered multiple times over, and is now threatened again.
In the parliamentary debate, I mentioned the projected rise in gross value of production in Mildura-Swan Hill horticulture to $2.2 billion by 2030.
That won’t happen if Labor buys water out of the basin.
Minister Plibersek is happy to splash billions of dollars of debt-driven taxpayer money just so Adelaide Labor MPs can win votes and celebrate 450 gigalitres more environmental water annually running out to sea.
The Nationals are in our farmers’ corner while Labor’s disconnect from the bush is again on full display.
