By Aaron Cordy
GREATER Shepparton City Council has drafted a submission to the federal government in response to the Water Amendment Restoring Our Rivers Act 2023, which will see 450GL stripped from the Murray Darling Basin.
The bill passed through parliament last December and has caused great concern for the many in the region who rely on water as the lifeblood of food growth and industry. It will allow the Government to negotiate with individuals to purchase their water holdings. There appears to be no clear plan of where the water taken by the government will come from.
“The original plan had as a cornerstone was a socio-economic outcome that would come from buying water for the environment. This new plan or new iteration of the plan throws that out the door,” said Murray Darling Association Region 2 chair, Cr Geoff Dobson.
“Should it be taken from the north, should it be taken from the south? We say that they should be spending the billions of dollars on infrastructure to put the water that we’ve got now, and there’s plenty of environmental water here now for us to use, but we’ve got to put it efficiently over the wetlands so that, you know, we can all have a feed out of the water that’s in our dams.”
As the food bowl of Australia, the flow-on effect of farmers suddenly selling their water rights is an unknown that could leave long-lasting devastation to growers and producers in the region without a regular flow of water down our rivers and irrigation channels.
Director of sustainable development for GSCC, Geraldine Christou understands the impact these buybacks could have on the whole of the region. The vagueness of the Bill leaves far too many questions unanswered.
“We know the volume of fruits and vegetables that are processed in the Goulburn Valley. It underpins our manufacturing sector,” said Geraldine.
“Why would we jeopardise that? Why would we jeopardise the amount of jobs that are retained here in the Goulburn Valley?
“It [the Bill] doesn’t tell us how much is going to be recovered from the southern basin. It doesn’t tell us where the buybacks are going to occur. We are very much opposed to buybacks because they are not strategic. And they actually create a Swiss cheese effect and undermine all the investment that has occurred here in relation to upgrading the irrigation system and also the amount of manufacturing and investment in manufacturing that has occurred here.”
Federal Minister for Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek MP, had been invited to visit Greater Shepparton on multiple occasions however, the offer had not been taken up.
