MORE than $150 million for on-farm irrigation upgrades will be pumped into 476 Murray-Darling Basin farms across southern NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
The funding is the first cash injection since NSW and Queensland joined Victoria and South Australia as signatories to the Murray-Darling Basin agreement in late February.
NSW and Queensland were the last States to sign the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA), which underpins implementation of the basin plan's key goal, to redirect 2750 gigalitres of water from primary production for environmental purposes.
Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Senator Simon Birm- ingham, said the projects would return 60GL of water to the environment and benefit farmers in the process.
Initally, $100m of funding was earmarked but a flood of quality applications induced the government to dig deeper to provide a $158m investment in irrigation infrastructure.
Senator Birmingham capped water buybacks at 1500GL as a sweetener for NSW and Qld
To hit the 2750GL target, the remaining 1000GL will come from increased efficiencies through on-farm upgrades and infrastructure to improve in-stream flows.
About 1150GL has already been secured in buybacks, and 750GL through increased efficiencies in infrastructure and on-farm programs.
That leaves 850GL to be found; 650GL is earmarked to come from efficiency measures and 200GL from more buybacks.
Last week the Coalition announced a new ministerial working group to investigate water infrastructure projects, which will be chaired by Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce.
Mike Foley
Senior journalist for The Land.
Senior journalist for The Land.
