THIS Monday Sam Birrell MP Federal Member for Nicholls, Shadow Water Minister Senator Perin Davey, Senator Matt Canavan met with a number of stakeholders from across the region as part of the first leg of a series of hearings into the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023.
The tour has been organised by the Coalition Backbench Committee on Agriculture, Water Resources, Drought and Environment after the Senate Committee hosting the Parliamentary inquiry will only hold hearings in Canberra. Coalition MPs from Basin communities will be visiting five towns in four days including Shepparton, Renmark, Mildura, Griffith and Moree.
Stakeholders presenting at the Coalition hearings included Chairman of the Board of SPC Hussain Rifai and Executive Director of the Australian Dairy Products Federation Janine Waller.
“The Senate committee that is inquiring into this has not arranged to visit basin communities to hear from affected stakeholders. They’re going to do two hearings, and they’re both going to be in Canberra. We decided as the Backbench Policy Committee to come out and hear from basin communities and this is the first one of those meetings,” explained Mr Birrell.
“We’ve invited a number of stakeholders who have business interests, community leaders and big employers in this region to come and talk to us about their view of Labor’s proposed changes. We’ll then take that information, from here in Shepparton and from the other basin communities, back to Canberra and submit a report about what we heard during this week.”
Janine Waller drove home what the impact of what this proposed change to legislation will have on the dairy industry.
“Currently, the dairy industry and the Murray Darling basin plan is home to more than 6,800 employees. That’s direct and indirect employees. That’s across more than 900 dairy farms and more than 40 dairy processing facilities. It generates more than $2B in value to the local economy and to regions,” Janine explained.
Water Minister Tanya Plibersek introduced the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 on September 6, with Federal member for Nicholls Sam Birrell emphasising how irrigators, basin communities and the region’s productivity will be devastated by destructive buybacks to recover more water for the environment.
