Australia’s food bowl, the Murray Darling Basin, which used to produce 40 per cent of our country’s food supplies is being demolished under present plans being rushed through parliament by the Federal Government Water Minister Tanya Plibersek.
Minister Plibersek is seeking to take another 450 Gigalitres of water away from staple food production and add even more water to the environmental account which is already sitting at 4622.5 Gigalitres.
Her inability to understand her actions shows how a city centric narrow-minded politician with no vision can destroy Australian agriculture with just the stroke of a pen. Former Prime Minister and founding visionary of Australian irrigation Alfred Deakin would turn in his grave. In the late 1800s, after Australia endured seven years of continuous drought, irrigation was seen as the way for Australia to drought proof itself and secure food production.
Now we have trillions of litres of unmeasured freshwater flowing out to sea through the Murray River mouth and with the Water Amendment (Restoring our Rivers) Bill 2023 being presently pushed through parliament, it will only get worse.
Australia is the driest inhabited continent in the world.
River communities and their environments are being made to suffer the impacts of an undeliverable basin plan and insidious water buybacks that have destroyed so much.
The Murray River is now operated like a super freeway which is unseasonal and unnatural. With constant flooding we are seeing massive bank erosion, tree deaths, explosion of carp breeding, hypoxic blackwater events, native fish kills, disease laden mosquito breeding and comprising of town water supplies including farmland and production.
The loss of the Basin’s food and fibre production and businesses that support it is massive.
Milk, meat, cheese, butter, rice, fruit, and vegetables – where will our food come from in the future?
Many farms have already shut down. The stress, the strain and the uncertainty of living through this is a total nightmare, with some paying the ultimate sacrifice embedded in the memories of those who remain.
It is disgusting no one will listen to the people living and working in these regions.
Generational farming families are suffering while the vision of drought proofing Australia’s food and fibre supplies is destroyed.
Does the Federal Minister for Water care? NO! Do you care?
Geoff Kendell
Chairman, Central Murray Environmental Floodplains Group
