Northern Victorian mayors have leapt to the defence of their communities, having sensed a multi-million dollar threat to their prosperity.
They got together in Canberra on Wednesday to call on the Albanese Government to put communities at the heart of the remaining implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and to reject open tender buybacks.
They describe as “grossly inadequate” the compensation figure offered to communities in return for the socio-economic harm that open tender buybacks would bring.
Murray River Group of Councils chair Ross Stanton warned that buying back water through one-on-one deals from anywhere across the southern basin, without a strategic plan developed with communities, would be the worst outcome for all Australians.
“Open tender buybacks will have serious negative social impacts on our communities,” Cr Stanton said.
“They will have serious negative economic impacts on our businesses and our towns.
“Worst of all, they will not restore our region’s rivers or our valued floodplain ecosystems.
“When market forces alone determine how much and where water is recovered, it actually makes achieving environmental outcomes harder.
“This is because it concentrates environmental water in dams upstream and it’s more difficult to deliver to the ecosystems that need it,” Cr Stanton said.
“There is a better way. Our councils believe that basin communities must be at the heart of the delivery of the basin plan.
“We know that more water will be recovered and that will have impacts but, if it is managed in a strategic way, developed with and supported by basin communities, that is going to deliver far better outcomes.”
The Commonwealth’s recent ABARES report forecast an annual reduction in farm gate production in the southern basin of $111 million a year.
“The last time the Commonwealth did open tender water buybacks in our region, we lost around 1600 jobs, it cost us hundreds of millions of dollars in production, and the price of water for agriculture went up by $72 per megalitre,” Cr Stanton said.
“Our irrigation districts ended up looking like Swiss cheese.
“They are delivering about 50 per cent less water over the same sized area — that has driven up the costs for all the remaining irrigators.
“If that happens again, it will push districts to breaking point.”