Murray Darling Basin fiasco puts all irrigators in danger of being swamped by critics
Irrigators provide food, thousands of jobs and millions of export dollars but they’re in danger of becoming pariahs, warns Ed Gannon.
Opinion
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Australia’s irrigation sector is entering dangerous territory. It now runs the risk of being pilloried to the point enough mud will stick and its very worth will be questioned.
The pile-on against irrigated farming has exploded in the past few years.
But it lifted to a new level last week after the release of a royal commission into the Murray Darling Basin ordered by a very compromised South Australian government.
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The sight of fish dying in the Darling River has triggered a torrent of blame against irrigators in the basin.
And that blame threatens to engulf the entire irrigation industry — in the basin or not.
Copping the bulk of the blame is cotton.
Critics have long claimed cotton should never be grown in Australia because of its high water use.
Many commentators and even governments are now openly hostile to cotton.
It has now entered the realm of hysteria, with the Centre Alliance party — formerly the Nick Xenophon Team — this week saying it would introduce legislation into federal parliament to ban the export of cotton.
Such a move would mean the demise of Australia’s cotton industry.
The cotton industry has rightly pointed out that the Centre Alliance does not know what it is talking about.
Banning cotton would not save any water for the environment. Farmers would merely use their allocated water for another irrigated crop. That’s if they have any water allocated to them.
Farmers grow cotton when they can get the best return for the cost of the water.
In years it is not profitable, they move the water to another crop.
Now, the Centre Alliance is a South Australian party. It has one MP in the federal lower House — Rebekha Sharkie — and two senators.
It is worth pointing out that cotton is not grown in South Australia, so none of the MPs risks losing a single vote over their stance.
It is also worth noting that in the Murray Darling environment debate, South Australia, which sits at the end of the basin, has long taken a holier-than-thou stance.
With South Australia, it is a case of all take and no give, with no concern for the impact water being taken from irrigators would have on communities in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.
This week The Weekly Times revealed South Australia has been keeping the level of Lake Alexandrina — at the end of the Murray River — artificially high for boaties and holiday makers instead of flushing it out of the mouth of the Murray as it is meant to.
And all the while fish continue to die upstream due to a lack of water in NSW.
True, there has been some bloody stupid practices in the basin over the years, particularly in northern NSW, where water was over-allocated.
But Victoria can hold its head high, having implemented sensible water management that is the envy of the rest of the country.
The current attack on irrigation now risks sweeping up other industries that rely on irrigation water — dairy and horticulture, for instance.
And it could affect even those that are not in the basin. Irrigators need to be careful irrigation does not become a dirty word — much like live exports.
Irrigation is vital for hundreds of communities, vital for thousands of jobs in the city and vital for the dairy exports that fill ships from the Port of Melbourne and provide millions of dollars in revenue for the state.
In a day where social media seems to control what we are allowed to think and say, irrigators and their communities cannot afford a wave of criticism to swamp them.
Ed Gannon is editor of The Weekly Times and co-host of The Ag Show on Sky Business News.
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