TIME couldn’t be more impeccably sweet for the federal Labor Party to reintroduce the water buyback scheme, to secure 450GL of water needed to complete the environmental water promised to South Australia when introducing the 2007 Water Act.
With struggling irrigation farmers and river communities on their knees financially after the recent devastating floods, what better time to take advantage of the desperate situation?
Yes, and please don’t kid yourself for one minute that financial institution economists are not advising clients in trouble, that the best way out of their financial woes is to sell their permanent water; but also, in the same breath would be advising another group of clients to invest in the water industry for long term trading gains.
Water speculators and corporates will be lining up to grab as much buyback water as possible for theirs and their shareholders’ own financial gains.
As you can see, a water buyback scheme has never been about securing water for the environment and was certainly never about using water for production and certainly not to secure a sustainable food and fibre industry for our nation’s population.
The true reality is the environmental water has gone out the river mouth time and time again over the years. It has always been modelled and never measured. How can anyone run a transparent, accountable and successful business like this?
You guessed it, they can’t. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan and water buybacks has always been about the money and how individuals or businesses can make money for themselves trading the water.
With the Labor Party’s direction now inevitable to take 450GL worth of water buybacks from the basin’s farming communities, the Victorian Government has only one direction left and that is to immediately announce their withdrawal from the basin plan.
Geoff Kendell
Chairman
Central Murray Environmental Floodplains Group
