Plan revived with water buybacks but won’t include Victoria

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Federal Government's latest plan for the Murray Darling Basin is far from a done deal with the Victorian Government and farmers opposed, and the Greens saying it's not enough. The revised agreement allows for the wide-scale resumption of water buybacks but excludes Victoria, because the state government remains opposed to the controversial policy.

Transcript

00:00 Well, you summed it up quite succinctly just there. We've got farmers on one side and environment

00:06 and greens groups on the other. When it comes to the Murray-Darling Basin plan, a huge amount

00:11 of water was promised to be returned to the environment by June of next year. Over a decade,

00:17 we've seen more than 2,100 gigalitres to put towards that target, which is a really significant

00:23 amount of water. But there's still a 750 gigalitre shortfall. And for some time, there's been

00:28 lots of warnings that the plan has really been going off the rails. Now we know that

00:33 the new federal, relatively new federal water minister, Tanya Plibersek, wants to use water

00:38 buybacks, that is allowing the government to buy back water licences from irrigators

00:43 so that water that has typically been used for farming will instead not be used to grow

00:48 food or fibre, but to go to environmental causes. Here's her colleague, the Agriculture

00:53 Minister Murray Watt, a little earlier today. Unfortunately for Tanya as the water minister,

00:59 she has inherited a complete mess from the former coalition government, which did absolutely

01:05 nothing to advance the Murray-Darling Basin in the nearly 10 years that they were in government.

01:09 I've spoken over the last 24 hours with the National Farmers Federation president and

01:14 CEO, and I understand that they're very upset and disappointed in this plan. But they recognise

01:20 that this is a policy that we took to the election, that we would deliver the Murray-Darling

01:24 Basin plan in full. And quite apart from the environmental benefits of doing so, it's actually

01:29 really important for agriculture as well. The Murray-Darling Basin is obviously the

01:35 biggest food bowl in our entire country. And if we don't do something to preserve that

01:40 basin and ensure that that river system is protected for the future, that will be disastrous

01:45 for Australian agriculture overall. So, Kath, we had the revamped plan announced

01:50 yesterday, the initial reaction. What happens next?

01:53 Well, it's all well and good to announce a new plan for the Murray-Darling Basin plan,

01:58 but it really won't be worth any more than the paper it's written on if Tanya Plibersek

02:03 can't convince the federal parliament to pass the new laws that she's seeking. She wants

02:08 to allow more time to complete projects. I'll just pick up on something that Murray Watt

02:14 did say there about the Farmers' Federation. It would say that the water could be delivered

02:21 for the environment with more time and more infrastructure projects rather than buying

02:26 the water back from irrigators. Regardless, Tanya Plibersek says she wants to be able

02:31 to buy the water. She'll need the support of the parliament to do that, and we expect

02:35 that legislation could come before the parliament when it resumes in a week or two.

02:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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