Water inquiry coming to Deni

The NSW Parliament inquiry is looking at the impacts of the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Act 2023 on NSW regional communities.

The Federal Government act allows the Commonwealth to seek further water recovery through buybacks, which local stakeholders have long argued this is a destructive way to achieve the aims of the Basin Plan.

The Pastoral Times learned late last week that the inquiry would be coming to Deniliquin on Wednesday, June 11.

At the time, no information about the meeting was publicly available.

Hearing locations were added to the inquiry’s landing page on the NSW Parliament website about the same time the Legislative Assembly Committee on Investment, Industry and Regional Development confirmed the hearing with this paper on Thursday afternoon.

It will be held at the Deniliquin Town Hall.

At the time of going to print yesterday, further details about the time of the hearing, who will be invited to speak and how people register to attend were still not available.

A hearing has also been scheduled for Southside Griffith Leagues Club on June 10. Again, no further details are available at this stage.

The Pastoral Times is still working with the department to ensure there the important details are advertised.

The inquiry was announced in February this year, and in the community feedback period 101 submissions were received.

In addition to multiple submissions from individual stakeholders, submissions were also received from SunRice, Murray Irrigation, Speak Up Campaign, Murray Regional Strategy Group, Southern Irrigators and Murray River Council.

Murray Irrigation - which is Australia’s largest private irrigation company - said previous rounds of water buybacks have already resulted in significant impacts.

It says further recovery of water by these means would be detrimental.

“Our footprint has experienced repeated rounds of state and federal water reform - and significant environmental water recovery - since our company was formally established in 1995,” MIL’s submission to the inquiry reads.

“As a result, average water delivery to customers has halved - from 1,200 gigalitres in 1995 to around 600GL today.

“Implementation of the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Act 2023 should not be done in a way that further impacts communities in our footprint. Based on our experience, we don’t believe it has to.

“MIL and its shareholders do not support and will not assist with water purchase programs in our footprint.

“What we are doing, however, is looking to ‘the environment’ to supplement and diversify our revenue streams. This helps to keep us afloat, while also maintaining highly-prized landscape values.

“We use our assets to deliver significant volumes of environmental water, on a fee-for-service basis.

“We’re also rolling-out Restoring Murray Waterways. This is our flagship project in collaboration with landholders and environmental water managers for delivering environmental outcomes in an increasingly variable climate, without needing large-scale water recovery.”

SunRice said while its growers are consistently working on water efficiency in food production, and making great strides, the Federal Government’s policies are still untenable.

“The SunRice Group and our growers are committed to finding sustainable solutions to managing the distribution of water resources in the basin. However, the current legislation puts the future of the New South Wales rice industry at risk,” the global food company said in its submission.

“We therefore encourage the New South Wales Government to urgently work with the Federal Government to develop a modified approach to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan implementation that ensures the long-term viability of irrigation-based production, industries, workforces and communities.

“In particular, the SunRice Group would like to see measures that better balance the needs of irrigation-dependent industries and communities are prioritised above water purchase in the Southern Basin.”