SENATOR Simon Birmingham went to the Riverina today to spruik his community engagement initiative – but locals left him in no doubt that the big issue remains unchanged: water entitlements.
As Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment Mr Birmingham has responsibility for the Murray-Darling Basin plan. Today, he announced a 40,000 megalitre allocation for wetlands in the lower Murrumbidgee and the creation of local engagement officers, who will help distribute the $32.5 million of funding for regional development projects.
But it was the earlier news, from Tuesday, April 9, that generated the most interest, when Mr Birmingham announced a $10 million water entitlement buyback from the NSW Murray and Lower Darling catchments.
This latest round of water purchases will be open until April 28 and it is expected to recover around 9 gigalitres of entitlements for environmental flow.
Murray Irrigators chairman, Bruce Simpson, said the buyback – which proceeds the release of Environmental Water Recovery Strategy – represents a scatter-gun approach to buybacks.
“Non-strategic buybacks are the worst kind of recovery,” Mr Simpson said.
“Every drop that leaves this region exports productive capacity.”
The relatively small tender is open to all comers, meaning a licence holder located at any point within an irrigation system could sell their water.
“Someone can sell up right in the middle of a channel system and that is a real problem.”
Fixed costs on remaining users is another concern for Mr Simpson. Licences fees and upkeep – will remain static while the number of paying users is reduced.
“Irrespective of where it the buyback comes from, water leaves but fixed costs stay and we are left as owner/operators to deal with costs to the members.”
However, Senator Birmingham did a good job listening to irrigators.
“Senator Birmingham was genuinely listening,” Mr Simpson said.
Mr Birmingham said future buybacks would be rolled out in a similar fashion.
"Over the next few years we anticipate undertaking a limited number of small tenders, in line with this purchase, to ensure that the small amount of buyback undertaken is not disruptive to the market or irrigation communities.
“The engagement officers get maximum bang for bucks out of the regional development spending,” Senator Birmingham said.
“Officers will work closely with our state agency delivery partners and our monitoring teams, to ensure that there’s consistency in decision making.”
Mike Foley
Senior journalist for The Land.
Senior journalist for The Land.
