NSW officials accused of bias towards big agriculture water users

Farmer and environmental groups are demanding fairer access to NSW water officials after the accidental release of internal emails appeared to indicate big irrigator and agricultural lobbies are receiving favourable treatment.

In an embarrassing leak, senior members of the water division of the Department of Planning were shown to have discussed excluding certain groups from being alerted about consultation over floodplain harvesting issues.

There have been calls for greater transparency after an email trail revealed officials appeared to have considered excluding some groups from a consultation alert.Credit: Nick Moir

It also reveals Peter Hansen, a water relationships officer, holds fortnightly consultation with the NSW Irrigators Council and NSW Farmers, a regularity not extended to other groups.

The revelation comes just a week after the Independent Commission Against Corruption found the government had a "repeated tendency to adopt an approach that was unduly focused on the interests of the irrigation industry".

In the emails, Mr Hansen asks his counterparts for details on the Murray Regional Strategy Group, writing on November 26: "Can we discuss before you send [the consultation pack] to that group. You need the background on them".

Another official, a senior communications officer, highlighted a second organisation, the Darling River Action Group.

"There are dedicated Facebook pages, eg Darling River Action Group, but those groups with such Facebook pages tend not to be favourable to DPIE Water," she wrote on the same day.

In the end, the consultation packs were sent out on Tuesday although as of Friday, the Murray Regional Strategy Group had still to receive theirs.

The group's chairman Geoff Moar told the Herald that his group had been trying for months to get a response from the water unit of the Planning Department and Water NSW, without any success.

"We have tried to engage with the NSW bureaucracy to discuss Murray Valley specific issues," Mr Moar said. "Many organisations in our region are no longer part of the traditional peak irrigation advocacy groups because they felt the Murray issues were not being understood or addressed."

NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey has been pushing for changes to the rules on flood plain harvesting.Credit: Janie Barrett

Healthy Rivers Network convenor Melissa Gray is among those who accidentally received the email chain. She replied she was grateful for being included as a recipient, "especially as the Department considers many facebook groups as not favourable to DPIE Water".

Ms Gray wrote: "[W]e do feel as environmental stakeholders that the environment often gets the rough end of the stick, and have noticed a tendency by DPIE Water to show bias towards irrigation. We’re mainly volunteers, sacrificing much to represent environmental perspectives."

The Herald approached Water Minister Melinda Pavey for comment.

A department spokeswoman said more than 60 groups had received the packs. A list provided to the Herald, though, indicated some of the recipients belonged to the same organisation.

The spokeswoman said: "The department has advertised widely about the consultation across all forms of media – print, radio, and social – and the packs were sent in addition to this to further inform members of stakeholder groups,", adding the information was already publicly available.

"The department engages widely on a range of issues and welcomes all views," she said. "It consults with many interest groups, including farmers, irrigators, local government, Indigenous groups, environmental groups and communities."

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Helen Dalton said "the fact these bureaucrats are doing this just days after ICAC’s scathing report shows they have learned nothing. They seem to think they’re above the law".

"If the NSW government excludes groups from consultation, it leads to skewed outcomes," Ms Dalton said. "It’s a reason why we’ve seen powerful groups take more than their fair share of water, while towns downstream run out of drinking water."