Citrus chair calls for state of emergency on basin plan

THE crisis is now.

And the Murray-Darling Basin Plan needs to be immediately reviewed as a state of emergency, according to Sunraysia Citrus Growers chairman Kevin Cock.

Mr Cock was among thousands of fed-up growers and irrgators who converged on Federal Parliament last week in a combined effort to highlight the failure of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

He deemed the protest successful as it attracted 2000 people who understood the “trainwreck was coming”.

But he admitted it did not achieve what it set out to, as there was “no commitment” from Water Resources Minister David Littleproud.

“We have received a ‘I’ll look into it’ type of thing, typical banker he gave us a cuddle and put more money in – that’s not what we are after,” Mr Cock said.

“He said he would form a committee, well that’s the 36th committee we have had since the start of the millennial drought and we are over them.

“(This needed to be acted on) as soon as yesterday.

“We have been at two governments now in two droughts and I forgave them the first time because it was new to me and new to them.

“It is a crisis and I am never an alarmist, I went through the last drought and I thought, ‘Okay we have learned a lesson, this is a one in 100 year’.

“But it is back again in 12 years, but worse – it is pretty stupid.”

Mr Littleproud announced last week he had asked former Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty to conduct an inquiry into management of the water sharing agreement and return his key findings in March.

Mr Cock said Mr Littleproud’s announcement had already been made prior to the protest, so therefore he had “really done nothing” for the farmers.

He said March was too late as irrigation season would “basically be done” after another “stinking hot summer”.

“If we don’t get any rain in the catchments by then you are going to get more towns drying up as it goes down, you are going to get more restrictions on water and we already have restrictions in the towns,” he said.

“There are 2.1 million people in the basin who are all going to go to Canberra for a drink of water – that’s basically what is going to happen.

“We now have to turn up the heat on the federal and state governments because they are all saying ‘it is not our problem, it is the other guy’s problem’.

“They are running us in circles and then they resort back to putting it onto the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which has Sussan Ley as the environmental minister and she is saying ‘I have to run that plan to 2024’.

“They need to come out with a state of emergency now and the Prime Minister can override what is going on and start saying ‘we have to stop water in the southern ocean for a start, we have to put a weir in at Lock Zero at South Australia, which guarantees Adelaide of its water and good quality water and we have got to look at storages’.

“We need more storages, it is as simple as that.”

Mr Cock said Ms Ley promised she would visit the Sunraysia region in upcoming weeks to “look at how the environmental water was used in our area”.