Australia’s food production and security will be “at risk” if the New South Wales (NSW) and Victorian state governments do not withdraw from the contentious Murray Darling Basin Plan, one community representative has warned.
Jan Beer, a representative from the Upper Murray River Catchment Association in Victoria, told The Epoch Times that the implications of the federal government’s water buyback scheme would be far-reaching if pursued.
Under the scheme, the federal government buys water rights from irrigators using the Murray-Darling Basin for environmental reasons—an area considered to be “Australia’s Food Bowl.”
“It will affect our ability to export food. And particularly food producers in Victoria and New South Wales have already given up large amounts of water for the environment,” Beer told The Epoch Times during a phone call on Nov. 11.
“If they buy back that water or they take that further water out of the consumptive pool, then food production and food security will be greatly affected because the irrigators get the very last of what’s left in the consumptive bucket of water.”
The NSW state government has responded to federal government moves saying it would oppose “non-strategic buybacks” due to the socioeconomic impacts
The Water Rights Tug-of-War
Water buyback schemes are a controversial part of the 2012 Murray Darling Basin Plan and involve the federal government “buying back” water entitlements from farmers to reduce the amount of the resource being taken from the system, in turn, allowing the government to meet certain water-saving targets.Environmentalists have tended to champion buybacks because it keeps more water in the system, while farmers and industry have resisted—the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is designed to balance the interests of both.
Yet the state governments, the current federal opposition, and national farming groups such as the National Farmers Federation and the National Irrigators Council, have staunchly opposed the move.
Both the federal Coalition and Labor governments have undertaken water buybacks since 2008.
However, there were community concerns over job losses. Later in 2015, direct negotiations between the relevant federal departments and irrigators were held.
More recently, there are concerns that Labor will continue to up its commitment to the scheme after its recent budget allocated an undisclosed amount of funding—not revealed due to “commercial sensitivities”—for meeting “water-saving targets” for the Murray-Darling Basin.
Beer warned the price of water to farmers would skyrocket if the federal government entered the market.
“I don’t think people take into consideration enough the fact that our food security here is at risk,” Beer said.
She said billions of dollars worth of crops have recently been destroyed by severe weather events, including flooding.
“And after every big flood, we'll always get very dry periods or a drought,” she added. “We then have to have sufficient water to be able to grow enough crops to feed ourselves and feed the rest of the world because we’re a major exporter of food.”
Buybacks ‘On the Table’
Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek had previously said that voluntary buybacks were “on the table” in relation to the Basin Plan, which she has also hinted at extending. She also said that the 2024 deadline for delivering the 450 gigalitres, through efficiency measures, in full by June 2024 was “next to impossible.”Currently, 634 gigalitres are still to be recovered across Australia’s largest river network under the basin plan.
While the federal water minister’s office did not respond to questions from The Epoch Times that were related to Beer’s concerns, Plibersek has told Sky News Australia that water buybacks had to be on the agenda given that some farmers were voluntarily approaching the government to sell their water.
Plibersek added that her government is looking for buybacks that represent good value for taxpayer funds.
The water minister also said that despite much of southeast Australia enduring recent floods, future droughts would strain basin communities, and they would therefore require access to environmental water.
She said that the environmental water that was released during the end of the last drought “literally saved towns.”
NSW and Victoria Not On Board
Both the NSW and Victorian governments have not agreed to the water buyback scheme, reported the ABC.“The NSW Government has repeatedly called on the federal Labor Government to rule out recovering water this way and has consistently advocated for a balanced approach to water recovery, through a combination of infrastructure improvements, environmental works, and rules review,” according to a statement from NSW’s Department of Planning and Environment.
Victoria’s water minister previously said that additional water recovery towards the 450 gigalitre efficiency project would only be considered if there were “no negative socio-economic impacts and without buybacks.”
Moreover, the former Coalition government had ruled out water buybacks as a way to meet water savings targets.
At the same time, South Australian Labor Water Minister Susan Close and South Australia Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young have both voiced support for the program.
Beer, who has a property on the Upper Goulburn River catchment area, said she “struggled to find any good points” with the Basin Plan.
“It’s absolutely obvious that the plan will not be completed by 2024. There are projects which simply don’t have the time to be completed in that short time,” she said.
Beer said the reason she backed the state governments to pull out of the Basin Plan was that the “federal water minister is not listening.”
“The economic impacts on those two states if she buys back water will be enormous.”
The federal water minister’s office has been approached for comment.
