Victorian Nationals came together in Shepparton last week to enunciate their fight to see the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) broken up into three separate entities as well as the scrapping the basin plan for ‘450 gigalitres of up water’.
Victorian Nationals Damian Drum, the Federal Member for Nicholls, Anne Webster, the Federal Member for Mallee, Senator for Victoria Bridget McKenzie, and the Member for Euroa and state Nationals deputy leader and water spokesperson, Steph Ryan, said the MDBA must be split into three separate entities amid ongoing concern the organisation continues to “mark its own homework”.
The Victorian Nationals are also calling for aspects of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to be discarded altogether.
Notably, the group of four Nationals, who gathered this morning in Kialla, south of Shepparton, said the return of 450 gigalitres of ‘up water’ cannot be delivered without significant impacts on farmers, basin communities and the environment.
Mr Drum said the MDBA, which oversees the Basin Plan, has conflicting roles, as highlighted in a December 2018 Productivity Commission report that found major shortcomings in the current institutional and governance arrangements.
“To not address these shortcomings poses a significant risk to the next phase of implementation of the Basin Plan,” Mr Drum said.
Ms Ryan said the Basin Plan was always supposed to be adaptive.
“Basin ministers should remove the uncertainty hanging over everyone’s heads by admitting the 450GL of water cannot be recovered,” she said.
Today’s call for the breakup of the MDBA and the scrapping of the 450GL comes a fortnight after the four Nationals MPs argued for a moratorium on further development below the Barmah Choke.
