FARMING communities across north east Victoria and southern New South Wales rallied in November, frustrated at plans to reintroduce water buybacks to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
However despite rallies across the region and the Riverina, just over a week later the federal government passed the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 on December 6.
According to federal government “the bill offers more time, more options, more accountability, and more transparency to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.”
It also guarantees an additional 450 gigalitres of water for the environment.
The 450Gl is to make up for a shortfall that was previously promised through water efficiency projects.
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So whilst it was stipulated that the 450Gl would only be recovered if the project passed a socio-economic test and there were no detrimental impacts to community, legislation has been bypassed and buybacks are now on the table to compensate for what critics perceive is bureaucratic mismanagement.
Although leasing has been introduced as a water recovery option, allowing farmers to sell their entitlements via the buyback; lease the water back to the government; or to sell their entitlement and in turn lease water from the Commonwealth, this has done little to assuage community concerns.
Landholders are now holding their breath to see how policy will be implemented and affect their local community, with hopes locally that the Commonwealth-sanctioned buybacks will be offset to ensure no water is lost from food production.
The Murray Darling Basin Plan is an historic deal between state and federal governments with the goal to rein in water extracted from both the Murray and the Darling River systems and their tributaries, with the recovered water to be fed back into the environment.
The plan became law in 2012, and since its inception figures projected for water recovery have proven unobtainable and key infrastructure projects remain unfinished or shelved.
Concerns with the plan have focused primarily on the lack of transparency, with data and modelling used to manage water in the basin complex and often not publically available.
Infrastructure projects (intended to increase water-use efficiencies) remain undelivered and confusion still exists on a governmental level as to who will get the water and how.
Water previously recovered and supposedly intended for flood plain regeneration has also failed to reach its desired locations.
Natalie Akers is a dairy farmer and jersey stud owner on an irrigated property at Tallygaroopna.
She is also a director on the board of Goulburn Murray Water and for the last six years has worked as a private consultant on agricultural water policy.
She has a keen understanding of both the water and dairy industry.
Ms Akers compares previous buybacks to a scatter gun approach with limited strategic or logistical foresight.
“On an environmental level we’re seeing bank erosion along the Murray and the Goulburn,” said Ms Akers.
“And at the Barmah Choke - which is considered of ecological significance - the riverbanks have eroded several metres and retreated past the crest of the natural levee.”
Fine sediments have been deposited into both the Barmah and Millewa forests and silt is impacting important open-water wetland habitats like the Moira Lake.
“Catchment Management Authorities are complaining about high river flows impacting native grasses and native animal breeding events, because it is all out of sequence.
“The plan was set up over ten years ago, with environmental targets that needed to be met and each river system was to give up a portion of its water to the basin plan,” she said.
“However the promised environmental benefits have not eventuated.
“Little consideration has been made to individual communities and local environments that are damaged along the way, all at the expense of creating a “super highway” of water to South Australia,” said Ms Akers.
Ms Akers is urging the government to quantify the environmental outcomes they are seeking and clarify which regions they intend to target.
"And whether tallies can be delivered," she added.
"Because currently the answer to that question is no.
"Until we know all this, we are effectively chasing at shadows.
"It's very easy for a metropolitan audience to set a figure and not understand the potential ramifications.
"And if the water is not reaching the areas that need it - to deliver the desired environmental outcomes - it's effectively pointless," she said.
With the dairy industry heavily reliant on the temporary water market to supplement water entitlements, buybacks will also directly impact the industry.
"During the dry times your permanent allocation is reduced, and farmers are forced on to the temporary market to make up the shortfall," Ms Akers said.
"Buybacks will shrink the temporary market, and dairy farmers will find themselves competing against horticulturalists who are typically prepared to pay more.
"So the market will not only be constrained, but dairy may very well find themselves outpriced.
"We then get to the point at which dairy farmers have to decide whether or not to stay in the industry.
"And those that remain will have to pick up the cost.
"Because if there's one thing we've learnt from previous buybacks is that the impact is felt right across the community.
"Once water leaves the district, so do the jobs.
Cr Shane Sali, Mayor of the Greater Shepparton City Council believes that water buybacks will have a devastating impact on the regional economy.
His sentiments were reinforced by a strong turn-out of over 100 trucks and tractors that lined the streets of Shepparton in late November.
“This is what happens when you take water away from the food bowl of Australia,” Cr Sali said.
“It’s not necessarily about today, it’s about our future.
“Our economy has always been agriculture.
“If the government were to take an additional 450Gl from irrigators our local growers will be severely impacted.
“Water buybacks hurt communities.”
Victorian Farmers Federation Chair Andrew Leahy said that the federal government needed to listen to reputable reports that point towards huge agricultural production declines if water buybacks were to proceed in the basin.
Mr Leahy quotes a figure of up to $850 million dollars lost in agricultural production per year.
“And the government has given no consideration to what happens in the next drought and the fact that over 40,000 acres of fruit trees will die as there is not enough water to go around,” he said.
What water is available will also be beyond the means of many farmers, impacting the economic viability of their operation.
“The Commonwealth Government is ignoring its own independent economic advice from the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics where they say ‘buybacks reduce the supply of water available for irrigation so therefore increase allocation prices’,” Mr Leahy said.
“Make no mistake, less water will result in less food and it seems it will take until the next drought when we have food shortages for everyone to realise the damage this legislation has caused.”
