How water buybacks could damage communities

Southern NSW farmers fear water buybacks will drive up prices, destroy irrigation industries, and devastate local communities.

Transcript

00:00I'm Alexandra Burnhardt from The Land and I've been out and about chatting to farmers, businesses

00:05and communities in the southern Murray-Darling Basin about what potential impacts water buybacks

00:12could have on them. For farmers one of the biggest concerns has been around the false water market

00:18the buybacks could create with increased water prices leading to decreased productivity and the

00:24ramifications could go far beyond the farm gate with many communities concerned that farming

00:29families will move away school enrollments will drop and even the local footy team may not have

00:35enough players to take to the field and in many of these communities the scars of the last major buybacks

00:42still run deep with some of the towns still not back to the populations that they were before.

00:49Here's what one farmer had to say. We're very very concerned uh this group with the uh

00:55uh the precedent that set with the buybacks and the future just where it's all heading it's all the

01:02unknowns that are you know really concerning our people and uh we're here for you know the production

01:12of food and fiber that um is sorely needed at a realistic cost and we can see that the buybacks are

01:21just really increasing the cost of production and really um hamstringing the uh the investment for the future.