VICTORIA’S Water Minister will be asked to release some of its share of environmental water into the Murray River system as an emergency relief in response to the current water crisis impacting Sunraysia growers.
Member for Mildura Ali Cupper said immediate measures were needed to ease pressure on irrigators with searing water prices threatening the future of the region’s family farmers.
Ms Cupper said the release of some of the state’s allocation of environmental flows would “take the pressure off right now” and give governments time to correct water policies to ensure they were uniform across all states.
She said the current water crisis was “heartbreaking” and “distressing” and something had to be done in the short term to ensure farmers’ survival.
“In terms of an emergency measure we need to talk about releasing some environmental water so that we can have more water in the system which is going to push prices down which is going to ensure our farmers can survive in the immediate term,” Ms Cupper said.
“That’s not a long-term strategy because we don’t want that ecosystem to collapse because that’s the whole point of the Murray Darling Basin Plan in the first place to have a balance,” she said.
“I’m not proposing this lightly, but I’m doing it in a way that has some serious provisos and constraints on it.
“I’m saying we just do it now for this year until governments can catch up with other things that can provide a more sustainable way of keeping prices fair so that our family farmers can compete.”
Ms Cupper said that would allow governments to address “absolute no-brainers” to create more fairness in the system including a ban on water speculators and floodplain harvesting, and put a halt on water extraction licences in NSW.
However, she said the Federal Government also needed to step up and play a leading hand in the crisis.
“We’ve got one state in Victoria that is doing some really proactive stuff, but it’s not enough and our farmers are still struggling,” she said.
“We’ve got other states that are undermining the good work that Victoria is doing.
“What the feds need to do is … take this over and have one chain of accountability to make sure there is uniformity on those really important, basic things, especially if they want to avoid a royal commission and if they want to redeem themselves somewhat for dropping the ball on all of this.
“We’re not talking about anything here that’s infrastructure like a desalinisation plant that’s going to cost $1 billion, we’re not talking about another pipeline that’s going to cost $750 million — we are talking about very simple policy levers which can be changed basically overnight that can make a really meaningful difference to our farmers.”
Ms Cupper said water being held in dams by private diverters should be returned to the river system as a public resource.
“There’s water in he system that we’re all fighting over and which is raising prices and making it extremely difficult for our farming families, who are the lifeblood of our communities and who make our communities what they are, to compete,” she said.
“Our communities aren’t there just to serve an economy — our economy is there to service our community — that’s the point of having a strong economy.
“If we get to a point where our economy is all that matters and free markets ride roughshod over everyone else, we just end up with a handful of big multinational conglomerates and that’s not in our interests.
“Our region does an extraordinary job at powering the agricultural sector which benefits our entire nation.
“And while I don’t have all of the solutions, necessarily, I’m certainly on the case.”
