Upper Goulburn farmers were prominent amongst the 3000 at the Tocumwal rally held to show displeasure at the Murray Darling Basin Authority and Federal Water Resources Minister David Littleproud.
Yea farmer Jan Beer addressed the rally:
“The Basin Plan has failed dismally on every front, economically, socially and environmentally.
“[It] will continue to fail because it is based on fundamentally flawed science, flawed modelling and outdated data, along with appalling mismanagement by the MDBA on a basin wide scale.
“Minister Little-proud continues to state the Basin Plan is not perfect but it’s the best we are going to get.
“We do not accept that Minister. It’s not even a second rate plan, it’s third rate and like a tower of cards, is imploding.
“He also says it gives us more certainty and security than ever before.
“The man has to be blind or insane – or both.
“The only certainty we can see is that irrigated agriculture is receiving less and less water and our Southern Basin communities and industries are being destroyed.
“With the proposal to take another 450GL from the productive pool, there has never been less water security.
“Failures of the Basin Plan are too numerous to mention:
n the criminal mismanagement of the Barmah Choke causing banks to collapse,
• The environmental degradation to the beds and banks of the Murray, Edwards, Murrumbidgee and Goulburn Rivers due to continually running the rivers at full channel capacity
• the explosion of European carp population ,
• the increased number of hypoxic black water events,
• the Menindee Lakes debacle whereby the upstream Murray and Goulburn Rivers now have to supply 39 per cent more water to SA as the MDBA and NSW Government in their wisdom drained the Lake , the result being that the Lower Darling was forced into extreme drought conditions 3-5 years earlier than would have naturally occurred.
“The Basin Plan objectives and proposals for the Lower Lakes, Murray Mouth and Coorong are hydraulically and physically unachiev-able and technically unviable.
“The Murray Mouth cannot be kept open 95 per cent of time without dredging. Even ex-Chair of MDBA, Neil Andrews, admitted on an ABC radio interview that this was optimistic
“Due to the Open Market Water Policy we are seeing water, our most precious finite resource being traded like a commodity on the share market, simply to enrich corporate investors and often having no input to food and fibre production, or to our nation’s security.
“Northern Victoria and Southern NSW are in the final throes of the Federal Government imposed systematic euthanasia of the irrigated dairy industry in favour of corporate farming causing great concern for intergenerational farming enterprises.“We have the GMID ‘rolled gold’, high tech, high cost, automated irrigation system which has cost tax payers in excess of $2billion, but which has seen its consumptive pool shrink from 1600 GL/ year to 850GL, making it highly likely with the dairying industry on the verge of collapse in northern Victoria, that the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District and Goul-burn Murray Water will not survive.
“The Constraints Strategy cannot be achieved as the Victorian Government will not intentionally flood private landowners or compulsorily acquire flood easements. “Victoria will only allow in-bank channel flows to the Lower Goulburn of 20,000 ML/day.
“It is therefor impossible to deliver 80,000ML/day to the SA border
“The fact that the 45OGL cannot be delivered to South Australia has been admitted by Minister Littleproud in private conversation, yet he refuses to publicly state this due to the fact that the Coalition needs the South Australian political vote and is terrified of upsetting the South Australian MPs.
“So we, the Basin communities, are the sacrificial lambs and a workable Basin Plan can never be achieved due to the political agenda.
“This is a direct contradiction of what good democratic government should be about.
“A democratically elected government should make decisions based on what is best for the common good or that which benefits society as a whole in contrast to benefitting private individuals or sections.
IMMEDIATE
SOLUTIONS
• Pause The Basin Plan review and revise.
• 1000 GL of the conveyance water or transmission losses must be borne by the environment, and debited to the CEWH in critical dry seasons such as this, as this is water that is already in the river systems and still contributing to the environment.
“Water is then allocated back to the states at the same rate at which each state has contributed to the conveyance water.
“This would immediately increase high security water allocations in Victoria and general security in NSW.
• As a matter of urgency commence construction of Lock Zero between Wellington and Tailem Bend, which would return 2,500GL on average to the productive consumptive pool and guarantee Adelaide’s water supply.
MEDIUM TO
LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS
• Revise the objectives for the Lower Lakes Murray Mouth and Coorong to ascertain what can in reality be achieved in an environmentally sustainable way.
• Clarify and re-write the Water Act 2007
• Undertake complementary measures in the Basin Plan – cold water pollution, fishways, improved water quality, European carp eradication
• Build an operational system between tributaries and catchments, so that flows can be coincided. This will take a minimum 4-5 years.
• Install modern and standardised metering, measurement and telemetry Basin wide.
• Redivert the South Australian South East Drains back into the Southern Coorong which will return 400GL directly into the Coorong, rather than sending it out to sea
MOTIONS
“Unless these motions are acted on within the next two weeks increasing protest action will take place as basin communities are desperate.
“We will hound governments and our political representatives until they take action
• We call on the Victorian and NSW Governments to withdraw from the current implementation of the Basin Plan
• We call on the Federal Government to immediately pause, review and revise the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
• We demand that Federal Water Minister David Littleproud be removed immediately from his portfolio as we have no confidence or trust in his ability to deliver a Basin Plan on a sound economic, social ane environment footing.
• Immediately allocate 1,000GL of the conveyance water to the southern basin irrigators to provide immediate relief particularly to those on their second successive year of zero allocations.”