A rally is being planned in Sydney next week to protest amendments tabled in Federal Parliament on Wednesday to change the Water Act.
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Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek introduced amendments to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan following revelations it would fail to hit its 2024 water recovery targets.
The scheme outlines the amount of water that can be taken from the ailing basin each year and aims to return 450 gigalitres of additional water to the environment by June 2024.
The new plan will push this deadline to December 2027 and includes more options and funding to deliver the remaining water, such as through voluntary buybacks.
Ms Plibersek said the amendments would ensure the plan was delivered in full as the basin faces a 30 per cent reduction in its flow by 2050 due to climate change and drought.
She has not said how much the government would set aside for buybacks, saying revealing the details could distort the water market.
The move has angered stakeholder groups, who have been fighting to have water buybacks taken off the table for more than a decade because of the negative impact it has on communities.
Leading next week’s rally will be NSW Member for Murray Helen Dalton.
“Join me and other concerned community members as we demonstrate to the Federal Water Minister, Tanya Plibersek, exactly what we think of her relentless attack on rural communities with water buybacks,” Mrs Dalton said in her call to action.
“We are just as determined to stop her as she is to destroy us.”
The rally is being planned for Thursday outside Ms Plibersek’s office.
Mrs Dalton said the plan to buy more water from the Murray-Darling Basin would be “a death sentence for farming along our rivers”.
“Labor is worried about losing votes in the city to the Greens so it’s claiming these buybacks will help the environment. But the truth is that constraints in the river system won’t allow this water to get to areas that might help the environment.
“In other words, Federal Labor wants to spend $3 billion on buybacks that won’t help the environment but will destroy farms and drive up the cost of living.”
Federal Member for Farrer Sussan Ley said the Federal Coalition will look to fight off buybacks, but with Victoria opting out she fears NSW will be a clear buyback target.
“I think it’s awful,” she said.
“I think it’s an excuse to buy water from our region.
“The Victorian Government stood firm, they won’t be coming to Victoria to buy water.
“You know where they’ll be coming. They’ll be coming to the New South Wales Murray and Murrumbidgee and that frightens me, alarms me and makes me incredibly angry …but I am up for this fight.”
Ms Ley said the NSW Government has the power to say ‘you will not buy our water’, but questioned whether Mrs Dalton has the power to influence that response.
“We have a local independent member for Murray who’s spent much of this year doing photo ops with or on behalf of the New South Wales Government,” she told ABC Riverina yesterday.
“Can I say that the Premier Minns and the Water Minister Rose Jackson have taken her for a ride.
“They’ve dumped her on a side road ... they’ve asked her to find her own way home because she has not been able to impact the one thing that matters to us most, which is water.“
Deniliquin-based Senator and Shadow Minister for Water Perin Davey said environmental outcomes appear to have been swept aside in the chase for numbers under Labor’s revisions.
“There is a lot to work through with these amendments, but I have always been focussed on maximising the environmental outcomes with minimal social and economic upheaval.
“That will be the test we apply to these amendments, but at first glance, it would appear the number is more important than the outcomes and that is not a good place to start.
“It is apparent the goal is now just to transfer 450GL worth of licences to the government from anywhere in the basin regardless of whether it can actually be utilised in the way originally envisaged.
“Easing or relaxing constraints used to be fundamental to maximise environmental outcomes and now we have a government that is taking a ‘no regrets’ policy to constraints and has written off a key partner in addressing them, being the Victorian Government.
“By creating a new classification of water recovery under the 450, against which the social and economic test will not apply, the Minister is effectively admitting that buybacks hurt communities, but that she doesn’t care.
“She says she will compensate those communities impacted, but she doesn’t say how the impact assessment will be made or what the compensation will look like.
“All too often in the past, compensation packages offered by government have been tokenistic when the need is for wholesale economic adjustment.
“As much as we all love painted silos or an upgrade to the footy oval, that in no way compensates for the closure of a rice mill or dairy processing plant.
“These amendments have been introduced following a woeful lack of consultation with affected communities, so the Nationals and Liberals will be pushing for a Senate Inquiry to directly engage with, and hear the concerns of, impacted communities firsthand.”
Senator Davey said the flow on impacts of water leaving irrigation districts goes well beyond the farm gate, which is why the previous government focussed their efforts on off-farm or in-river water savings.
“This Minister says all options are on the table but wants to start with buybacks rather than with new ideas.
“In a cost-of-living crisis, Tanya Plibersek is choosing to take water out of agricultural production which will only further increase the cost of groceries for Australian families,” Senator Davey said.
Senior journalist