Community to Suffer Under Buyback Announcement

Independent member for Murray Helen Dalton has slammed federal water minister Tanya Plibersek’s decision to commence the 450GL buyback.

The announcement puts at risk a $24billion southern basin irrigated industry and will impact our communities socially, environmentally and economically – despite the supposed protection of a neutrality test seemingly being ignored.

“This is not an argument of environment verse agriculture; it is about common sense and practicality.

“As farmers we need a sustainable and healthy environment to survive but we also need to have the means to grow food to feed our nation, and we cannot do that without a reliable irrigation allocation.

Mrs Dalton questions whether this government expects our food to just magically appear in the supermarket.

“The way we are going, Australia will become reliant on food imports - food grown in god knows what, without our strict guidelines,” Mrs Dalton said.

The southern basin has already contributed 84-percent of buybacks to date and there is no more water left to give.

“How can we keep producing staple food when the ingredient we need the most, water, is continually taken away from productive agriculture?”

 Irrigation is dual purpose water.

It supports bio-diversity on farm and creates environmental opportunity and yet this is ignored by government with policy that continues to take away from agriculture.

Mrs Dalton said changes to river management since the implementation of the basin plan are already decimating river health and eroding riverbanks, additional volumes will only exacerbate the problem.

“How does Tanya propose to deliver an additional 450GL through a system already imploding under current delivery volumes?

“We know an additional 450GL can only be delivered if the major rivers are in flood which in itself provides an additional flood risk to upstream communities, similar to the destruction we have seen with the 2022 floods,” she said.Independent member for Murray Helen Dalton is calling for a tri government push to address the issue of housing in Murray.