ENVIRONMENTAL water buybacks will be axed and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) will be stripped of its enforcement role in the biggest shake-up of the river system’s management in a decade.
Under the plan, announced by Water Minister Keith Pitt on Friday, efforts to save water by upgrading infrastructure for irrigators will be ramped up to compensate for the end of the water buyback scheme.
River communities and many small irrigators have argued that the water buybacks have undermined their economic sustainability, however environmentalists have insisted extractions from the river remain too high to safeguard its biodiversity.
The MDBA, which has supervised the competing priorities of irrigators, communities and the environment since 2008, will lose its powers to check compliance with the river management plan to a new independent umpire.
The powers will be added to those of the inspector-general of Murray-Darling Basin water resources, a post now held by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty.
Mr Pitt said the Murray-Darling Communities Investment Package was a way forward to get the most from the basin plan.
“Communities have told us in no uncertain terms that they are sick of being talked at and not listened to,” Mr Pitt said.
“It’s time to shift our focus to engaging and involving communities in developing the solutions that are right for them and to stop treating the water recovery task as something separate,” he said.
Mr Pitt said he expected this change to “end the perceptions that the MDBA is structured in a way that it could mark its own homework”.
Ending the fraught policy of buybacks, under which irrigators sell back their right to take water from the river system to the Commonwealth, preserving it for the Murray-Darling Basin’s health, comes as the government faces concerns over the effectiveness of its infrastructure plan to create water savings.
Member for Mallee Anne Webster said it was time to make the Basin Plan invest in communities rather than communities pay for the Basin Plan.
“The change the package delivers when it comes to compliance is a win for Victorians, and people in Mallee, with a new statutory compliance role being established to separate the MDBA,” Dr Webster said.
“It will be music to the ears of farmers in Mallee.”
Leader of The Nationals Peter Walsh said Victorian irrigators had done the heavy lifting to return water to the environment.
“It has pushed our basin communities to breaking point — we can’t afford to lose any more water,” Mr Walsh said.
“Victorian irrigation communities won’t survive further water buybacks so the Federal Government’s commitment not to re-enter the water market is a welcome relief for those who need to have enough water to keep producing fresh, clean food for our nation.”
