Liberal leader Sussan Ley has condemned the decision to buy back more water from irrigators in her electorate. Photo: Sussan Ley Facebook.
Federal Opposition leader and Farrer MP Sussan Ley has criticised the Federal Government’s recently announced plan to buy back extra water from southern basin farmers – most of whom are in her electorate.
Under the Murray Darling Basin Plan, bureaucrats have been buying back water licences from irrigators to improve the health of the river system.
These efforts have ramped up since the Labor Government was elected in 2022. Last week, Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said in a speech he had approved the purchase of an additional 130 gigalitres of water – an amount equivalent to 52,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
“My department has released an updated Restoring Our Rivers Trading Strategy, expanding the voluntary water purchase program in the southern basin,” he said.
“This expansion takes the program from 170 gigalitres (GL) up to 300 GL, towards the [Murray-Darling Basin Plan’s] 450GL target.
“Voluntary water recovery to reach this target will come from EOIs that we have received in previous rounds in the southern connected basin, rather than opening up a new round of EOIs.”
Ms Ley described this as an act of “vandalism”.
“Regional Australia is being hung out to dry once again by a Labor government that listens to green activists before it listens to the people who grow this nation’s food,” she said.
“For more than three years Labor has brushed aside the voices of communities who rely on the Murray-Darling Basin for their livelihoods.
“In its latest 130 gigalitre buyback, aimed squarely at the southern basin and directly at towns across my electorate of Farrer, it’s not a policy for the environment.”
Ms Ley said towns in the southern Riverina such as Deniliquin, Barham, Wakool, Finley, Berrigan, Jerilderie, Tocumwal and Mulwala would carry the cost.
Although buybacks are made on a voluntary basis, Ms Ley claims the flow-on effects will be devastating for towns that are already coping with population loss and service reduction.
“These towns rely on irrigation for jobs, small business activity and the confidence that holds our local economies together,” she said.
“When Labor removes hundreds of billions of litres from irrigation, it is not just water that disappears.
“It’s harvests that never occur, investment that dries up, and families who are forced to leave. It is the quiet erosion of the very fabric of regional life.
“Labor claims the environment demands this. In truth it is the Greens who demand this, and it is Labor who caves. That is not stewardship. It is vandalism.”
Under the basin plan – an agreement between state and federal governments initiated in 2012 – 2100 gigalitres of water has already been taken out of agricultural production and restored to the river for environmental purposes.
The Federal Government has argued more water is needed because the condition of many rivers remains poor.
