Murray Darling Basin Plan - an act of sabotage

The busiest people in town will be the financial counsellors, the mental health workers and Centrelink. The churches, the CWA and local charities will pick up the pieces.

Farm family gatherings will be arranged around a Sunday BBQ or a footy match to try to give people the skills to cope.

Councils will struggle to maintain their roads on a declining rate base and they won’t be able to keep community buildings repaired or gardens up to scratch.

Banks and other lenders will start to seriously crunch their numbers now. If they detect that equity is sliding, they may decide to encourage water sales to pay back debt and in many cases the water is worth more than the farm.

The water Minister Tony Burke talks of a long careful consultation. What sort of slow torture will communities have to go through over the next 18 months?

The Water Act leaves the final say with the government. I suggest to the Minister that he step up and take control of the process, his Department and the MDBA. This is a bad plan for regional Australia and it will be a bad government that allows it to remain credible.

At the first of the MDBA’s consultation meetings in Shepparton this week, the Chair and the CEO appeared uncomfortable. When questioned as to why the scientific analysis behind the numbers has not been explained, they blamed state governments for providing the model. They said, “We want you to question the models and suggest how we can make it all better”.

Let’s get this straight. The MDBA writes reports. Farmers grow crops. The MDBA has had three years to write this report and we have had three days to read it. Now suddenly we are supposed to have the expertise to question the models without knowing what the models are?

The consultation sessions are now underway across the basin in the form of a quick flit through a few towns, with slick PowerPoint presentations in halls overflowing with bewildered angry people and not a Labor member or minister in sight.

It’s a shocking indictment on a government that claims to care about country Australia.