170 GL In Unnecessary Water Recovery To Win City Votes

NSWIC

In a clearly political move to win city votes at the expense of regional Australia, the Commonwealth has today kicked off a second buyback tender in the southern Murray-Darling Basin in 2024-25.

NSW Irrigators' Council CEO Claire Miller said with an election due any moment, "today's announcement is clearly intended to try to win city votes while throwing regional communities, farmers and even the environment under the bus.

"Today we learn the Government is full steam ahead to buy up to another 100 billion litres in 2025, on top of the 70 billion litres from its first tender opened last year.

"The minister claims she considers social and economic impacts before approving buybacks. Considers maybe, but clearly ignores when ABARES says past and planned water recovery wipes $602 million – $914 million every year from what the farmgate value of irrigated agriculture would otherwise be.

"The one-off $300 million assistance package will not even touch the sides of what irrigation-dependent communities need when the Government is stripping hundreds of millions of dollars in income from their economies every year.

"We also know that while more than 3000 GL recovered to date is delivering important, localised environmental benefits, more water will not deliver the Basin-wide step change needed to reverse declining native fish and static waterbird populations, and improve water quality.

"For that, the Government must stop spending billions of dollars on unnecessary water recovery and instead invest in fixing degradation drivers such as lack of fishways and invasive species like European carp choking waterways and wrecking water quality and native species habitat."

Ms Miller said today's announcement also puts the lie to Commonwealth claims it is prioritising non-purchase options in the southern Murray-Darling Basin, and avoiding concentrated impacts.

"It is a lie when non-purchase options remain tangled in red tape with no contracts yet signed. And it is a lie when this latest tender is seeking 20 GL-plus parcels that could be concentrated in a community.

"We know water buybacks hurt regional communities because this has quite literally played out before our eyes already after the 2008-2012 buybacks. Any form of water recovery must be done in a way that does not have negative social or economic impacts on regional communities."

The buyback tenders come on top of NSW proposing to hike rural water bills by up to 341% by 2030, and concurrent NSW reviews on river connectivity and drought planning that could slash farmers' water access by more than 25 per cent even in average and wet years.

"The cumulative impact of these federal and state moves is pushing farmers out of business and Aussie food off the shelves," said Ms Miller.

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