Mark Twain’s famous remark has been repeated often because of its underlying truth. Water is critical for our existence: enough of it is essential for growing our food, watering our gardens and keeping our environment healthy. Too much of it, as we are being reminded, can be devastating.
Disputes over where the water goes, either in flood or drought, were occurring long before the author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn visited Australia on a lecture tour in 1895 and have continued ever since.
The interests of landholders, irrigators, town-dwellers, local government and various agencies are varied and complex. As far as floods go, we in the Goulburn Valley have a long history of levy-construction and river management to try to balance these interests — with dusty volumes of flood studies to prove it.
On the water supply side, however, the looming deadline of 2024 for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan hangs over us like the sword of Damocles. As Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed pointed out to Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek this week, our Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District communities have already made major sacrifices, giving up the most water of any state under the plan.
Ms Sheed and her co-chair of the GMID Leadership Group, David McKenzie, reiterated the deep disappointment our irrigation communities feel when the government uses language suggesting so little water has been recovered, when half of ours is gone.
And they made the point that data from the current flooding, including the huge rainfall across the entire basin, needs to be considered, instead of sticking steadfastly to a number — a political compromise — hammered out 10 years ago.
Ms Sheed, of course, understands these complex issues intimately. Aside from her irrigation farming background, she was a founding member of the Lower Goulburn River Management Authority, then continued on the River Health and Water Quality Committee when the Lower Goulburn was absorbed into the Catchment Management Authority.
She knows the flood studies and the solutions, some of which were never implemented because of local politicking. Now she is in pole position to do something about it. And her GMID Leadership Group has been relentless in gathering together the most informed and astute minds on the water issues facing us.
If we are to preserve and grow this region’s prosperity, our capacity to influence policy in this highly charged area is both critical and urgent. We gave up half our irrigation water during a punishing drought. The plan picked a number — forged in the midst of that drought — that a loose cabal of ACT and South Australian scientists (and politicians) claimed the environment needed to survive.
We have pulled our weight towards that number — the other states haven’t. And scandalously, there has been no rigorous assessment of how well the floodplain has flourished in the years after the drought, with the huge flows of environmental water.
Over the next two years, we are fighting for our future and, in our view, there is no candidate better equipped to lead us than Ms Sheed. She understands the disgraceful evaporation of water on South Australia’s lower lakes and that their artificial barrages must go; she understands the myth of the degraded Coorong, blamed on upstream irrigators, but in fact caused by South Australia’s drainage schemes.
Ms Sheed’s command of this complex area of policy took many years to develop, as did her relationships with agencies and influencers in the sector — not least the likely water minister in the Andrews Government, Harriet Shing. Our biggest water fight is ahead of us; we need to hit the ground running.