WE have one river. One system. And a lot of communities rely on that system.
The Murray River can only “give” so much before it ultimately collapses.
It is only fair that the “give” is distributed equitably.
Years ago, a decision was made to unbundle water from the land and make it a commodity.
The free-market system has supporters and opponents, depending on who you ask.
Issues like inter-valley trade on the Murray River above and below the Barmah Choke can be polarising too.
But one issue of absolute common ground is that of floodplain harvesting. It is the issue on which everyone in our region, except the Coalition Government, agrees.
A river is not a river without its floodplains. And when those floodplains are dammed so that the water cannot reach the river, the system is rigged.
When water is artificially held back on the Darling River to the north, there is less water for our farmers in the south.
Our permanent water holders receive smaller allocations and the price of temporary water is pushed up.
The NSW Coalition Government has supported this practice, claiming it was legal when it simply wasn’t — failing to uphold its own rules.
Why would the NSW Government do that?
My cross-border colleague Helen Dalton has been fighting for a public water register so that potential conflicts of interest can be identified and challenged.
But her attempts have been aggressively thwarted every time by the NSW Coalition Government.
The river may have 99 problems, but floodplain harvesting is the biggest, most flagrant, most selfish problem of all. And the NSW Government is acting with impunity.
Diplomacy has been tried and failed. It’s now time for our Water Minister Lisa Neville to take the gloves off. No more niceties at MinCo. T
It’s also time for the Federal Government to step up, to find its backbone and force the NSW Coalition Government to clean up its act, for the sake of our farmers, the environment, and the millions of Australians the system feeds.
