THE Shadow Minister for Water, the Hon Michael McCormack MP, toured Nicholls with Federal Member for Nicholls Sam Birrell MP to get a better understanding of how water buybacks affect the region.
The pair met with dairy farmers, orchardists, irrigation leaders and Greater Shepparton City Council. The tour included driving the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District, meetings with dairy farmers at Loxleigh Jerseys in Tallygaroopna and orchardists at McNab Orchards in Ardmona, as well as discussions with the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority and the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District Water Leadership Forum.
“Labor’s removal of the buyback cap and pursuit of an additional 450 gigalitres of water has undermined the protections that were put in place to safeguard agricultural production and regional communities,” Mr McCormack said.
“Our water priorities focus on protecting jobs in regional communities and keeping families on their farms, rather than pursuing policies that strip water out of productive agriculture.”
The Coalition has outlined a set of principles to guide its approach to water policy in the Murray-Darling Basin: ending further reductions to the amount of water available for farming and productive use, targeting an increase in the consumptive pool for farmers, towns and businesses, and reforming the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to return surplus water to the temporary consumptive pool to lower prices.
“Water is probably one of the most important things we need to be able to grow our crop. Annual rainfall is just not simply enough for us to get a commercial crop, and the trees behind us are only two years old, but for us to commit to the expenditure of planting those trees and the trail system and everything in getting that into a commercial crop situation is a huge expense, and without water, simply we wouldn’t be making those decisions,” said Mitch McNab.
“We need more opportunity, and to get access to water, and the reality is that there’s not enough in the consumptive pool at the current point in time, and water buybacks are only going to make that harder for us to have access, so we need that to stop, and we need some mechanisms in place for us to have greater access to water going forward.”
