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Murray Darling Basin Plan - an act of sabotage

By Sussan Ley - posted Friday, 15 October 2010


Under the current scenario, towns near Albury might find themselves permanently on Stage 4 water restrictions while the Hume Dam spills over with environmental water. If the best use of that water is to “top up” a flood, the authorities will have to be very careful they don’t top up a rain event and flood homes and properties. When I expressed this concern recently, I was told that the Commonwealth could simply buy the river flats so they could flood them as required.

If this is the attitude behind current government policy then it simply dismisses family farms as an inconvenience. There are 26 locks, weirs and barrages on the Murray. It is a highly regulated river. No one is suggesting that we remove these man made structures, yet the scenarios painted by the MDBA benchmark “no development” as if anything that departs from that is a step in the wrong direction.

Our aim should be for healthy working rivers that are not over allocated and that support the environment and communities. This is not a zero sum game. We do not have to shut down towns to protect wetlands.

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During the last four years of drought, the dairy farmers, rice farmers and others who grow annual crops received a zero water allocation. People imagined when the Lower Lakes and river redgums were in decline that some greedy irrigator somewhere in the system must be taking all the water. In fact there was no water to take. In a drought, everyone does it tough, including the environment.

At least 270 billion litres that the government claims to have bought as part of the $1.4 billion spent so far will never assist a stressed river or sustain a wetland because of the type of licence and the characteristics of the water. For example, water bought from an upstream farmer might not physically be able to be delivered to a particular wetland using existing flows at a chosen time.

The interconnected nature of the system’s tributaries, wetlands, lakes and river flows is enormously complex and the fact that there is no watering plan in sight shows the inability of the Canberra-based bureaucracy to come to grips with this highly practical aspect of their task.

If the scientists in whom Julia Gillard has placed her trust and her cheque book have their way and 37 per cent cuts kick in across the Basin, there is a tremendous human tragedy waiting to unfold.

Last week I visited the Lower Darling between Pooncarie and Wentworth in Western NSW. I saw farms that run broad acre grazing of sheep and goats and also have a small water allocation (in a good year) and are growing new varieties of citrus and wine grapes, drought tolerant wheat and lucerne in order to become self sufficient in stock feed. One farm supported three households. The sisters-in-law were working the paddock together, driving a purpose built slashing machine up and down the rows of grapes, cutting the cover crop and mulching the vines. There is a school bus that passes the gate and a nearby one-teacher school that started in a farm shed but now has more than 20 students.

I heard about the years of drought from 2003, the worst on record, when the Darling dried up into water holes and everyone struggled with poly pipes and pumps, carting water, digging in the mud, getting by from week to week. When they had almost run out of options, rain from the north reached them. One of the women told me of the feeling of euphoria unlike anything she had ever experienced as she watched the water flowing down the dry river bed.

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In the nearby towns of Mildura and Wentworth people battled during those years to keep permanent plantings alive and many family farms went under. Drive around the district now and you will see abandoned blocks with dying vines and dilapidated dwellings. They are unsaleable. The Labor government paid exit grants to encourage blockies to leave the land. But as a condition of the grant - $150 000 - they had to pull out their pipes and decommission their farms so they were permanently removed from production.

The Coalition earmarked $5.8 billion for infrastructure upgrades on farms, so we could help farmers build a future with less water. That infrastructure fund will have to go towards Gillard’s buyback cheque. If Labor was at all interested in efficiency measures they would not have wasted the last three years, taking water out of local communities and putting nothing back.

If the 37 per cent water cut goes through, it will be “game over” for many. Very few farmers can take that sort of hit to their production. Their farms and their irrigation companies will be in danger of falling below the critical mass needed to survive. Irrigation delivery systems will shrink, investment in new plant breeds and technologies will slow, the factory where fruit is supplied will downsize and workers will be laid off. It is the temporary workforce that goes first; the production hands, the bar staff, the shop assistants. If enough leave, house prices go down and facilities start to deteriorate. The hospital may be downgraded, the TAFE will offer fewer courses to the kids who are looking for apprenticeships and training; less tourists will stop and the coffee shops will close.

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About the Author

Sussan Ley is the Liberal Federal Member for Farrer

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