Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Family farmers and regional communities are racked with uncertainty about whether or not they have a future. No-one should ever criticise an irrigator while their mouth and stomach are full. Investment is on hold in the Riverina while the water debate drags on and non-strategic buybacks continue. The first response of the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities to further delays in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan draft was to announce more water buybacks. 'I do not think,' he said, 'we can continue to delay getting back into the water market and so I will be talking to the department today about working out how quickly we can get back into the buyback of water.' The minister would know as well as anyone that the regional Australia committee—and, more importantly, the Independent member for New England, who helps keep the illegitimate government in office—on 2 June handed down 21 worthwhile recommendations, the key of which was No. 7, calling for the immediate cessation of all non-strategic water purchases. When will the minister listen? When will he act? When will he do the right thing by the good people who grow our food and fibre?

Today, there is even more conjecture about water cuts and what the future may hold for family farmers and regional communities. Leaks from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, now due to release its draft in November, foreshadow more drastic cuts to water entitlements. The government will cower behind the fact that the MDBA, now run by former New South Wales Labor minister Craig Knowles, is an independent body. Indeed it is. But what we need now is transparency, not death by a thousand cuts. Griffith's triweekly newspaper, the Area News, has been understandably strident in its advocacy for a fair and just outcome. This is what Ross Tyson wrote in an editorial in the Area News on Wednesday:

IT WILL take more than a little creative accounting from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) to fool Griffith.

The revised water cut figures obtained by The Area News indicate precious little has changed since the MDBA was run out of town last October.

Griffith saw the guide and its 32 to 43 per cent water cuts last year and told both the Labor government and MDBA what it thought in no uncertain terms.

Eleven months on from that astonishing show of defiance, it appears the community will have no choice but to dust off its placards once again.

The MDBA claims the draft plan, which is slated for release in November, will be light years from the guide that caused so much damage to this city even without the recommendations being implemented.

But the "new" figures being shopped around by the MDBA to various national water stakeholders certainly look an awful lot like the old ones.

The idea of stripping 3000 gigalitres from productive use in irrigation-dependent communities was predicted, in several studies completed over the last year, to have disastrous social and economic consequences.

So it is an absolute insult that after promising to listen to concerns and take on board advice from locals on the ground to then be even entertaining a figure of 2800 gigalitres.

MDBA chairman Craig Knowles will be in Griffith next week to explain the figures to local stakeholders and has urged people not to jump to conclusions until the draft plan is complete.

But since he took over the role from Mike Taylor, this community has given him a fair go—a very fair go, in fact—and it is now time for him to deliver.

Unless Mr Knowles can satisfy the Griffith people that a plan with essentially the same numbers can be substantially different, then any goodwill left will have evaporated forever.