FEDERAL Water Minister Tanya Plibersek and other lawmakers holding the fate of the Murray-Darling Basin in their hands were dazzled by basin producers on Wednesday night in Parliament House.
Food and fibre producers from the Sunraysia and Swan Hill regions of Mallee united with their counterparts from the upper basin in Queensland all the way down to South Australia to showcase what the basin has to offer.
The smorgasbord gave food for thought for Ms Plibersek, who threatens producer and community livelihoods with Labor’s amendment to the Water Act revising the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Despite the Allan Victorian government refusing the Albanese government’s radical agenda, the minister intends to bring back buybacks to rip out water that regional farmers and their communities rely on for production, despite the negative outcomes we know this will produce.
Former Labor water minister Tony Burke, now a senior member of cabinet, wrote the social and economic neutrality test into the original plan in 2012 because he recognised buybacks were detrimental to communities and that to chase an extra 450GL to return to the environment would be a step too far.
In 2018, The Nationals enshrined this safeguard by getting all the basin states to agree to that test – which the current minister now wishes to tear up.
Maintaining that test should be a crucial element to this Bill.
The Nationals this week demanded the minister remove buybacks from the Bill.
My colleague, opposition water spokesperson Perin Davey, says the Bill is already a lose-lose for our irrigation communities because an unamended Basin Plan will force the government to execute a fresh round of buybacks for 300GL from 2024, due to state failures to complete a raft of large-scale, efficiency enhancing infrastructure projects.
If the Bill passes the Senate unamended there will be open slather buybacks for up to 750GL – equivalent to one-and-a-half Sydney Harbours.
Yet again we see Labor’s scorched-earth approach to regional Australia in full flow, shrinking regional economies and pandering to inner-city voter concerns with no appreciation of how we feed and clothe the nation and the world.
