THIS week my Murray-Darling Basin representative colleagues and I, as well as the Coalition Agriculture Committee, have toured basin communities to hear from locals.
I hosted a meeting in Mildura with growers and other water stakeholders.
The flow-on effect from Water Minister Tanya Plibersek’s plans to resume buybacks from irrigators in order to satisfy South Australia’s wish for 450GL of environmental water will impact irrigators but will hurt all Australian families at the checkout.
If water is taken out of farm operation, naturally there will be less ability for farmers to grow their produce – reducing production and making produce more expensive.
At a time when mums and dads are struggling to manage the family budget, small businesses will also be hit, such as small independent supermarkets.
Bigger supermarket chains rely on buying power and control market profits with increased shelf prices to keep their margins.
Smaller shops in rural towns don’t have that luxury.
They can either buy more expensive stock or simply go without – either is a perverse outcome for locals.
Labor’s amendments to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan may trigger such a knock-on effect.
If a local shop can’t afford to stay open or can’t stock what people want, it soon goes out of business as people look elsewhere.
Ms Plibersek’s amendments to the plan to bring back water buybacks also confirm Labor is not committed to the socio-economic neutrality test that had previously been a hallmark of the plan’s bipartisanship.
That neutrality test was agreed to by the states under the leadership of the Nationals in 2018, building on the safeguard Labor Water Minister Tony Burke had written into the plan to pursue buybacks only if they delivered positive or neutral social or economic outcomes.
Now Ms Plibersek wants to rip the neutrality test out of the plan and take the basin in a direction that will wreak havoc in our river communities.
It will impact not just those in the basin but ultimately all Australians.
