The Australian Ag Podcast: Where to for the Murray Darling Basin Plan

On The Australian Ag Podcast, National Irrigators Council chairman Jeremy Morton discusses potential water buybacks, the outlook for the upcoming irrigation season and exploding carp populations.

National Irrigators Council chairman Jeremy Morton.

Governments must honour their own commitments towards water recovery under the Murray Darling Basin Plan and leave irrigators “the bloody hell alone”.

That’s according to National Irrigators Council chairman and southern NSW farmer Jeremy Morton.

Speaking on today’s episode of The Australian Ag Podcast, Mr Morton said recent discussion about the need to recover another 450 gigalitres of water for the environment under the plan through water buybacks failed to acknowledge the more than 2000 gigalitres already recovered from irrigators.

“We’ve always been nervous about this back end of the Basin Plan and how it gets delivered because there is potentially a whole lot of extra water recovery that could happen if the supply measures and the efficiency measures don’t get delivered,” Mr Morton said.

“It creates a lot of uncertainty. We don’t want any more water recovered (from irrigators) – we think irrigators have contributed their bit which was the 2100 gigalitres of buybacks and efficiency measures.

“From our point of view we just want the governments to meet their commitments around what they were going to contribute towards the Basin Plan and leave us the bloody hell alone.”

Mr Morton described the Basin Plan as “far from a failure”.

“It has been very successful … it has recovered a lot of water (and) all that water is now being used for the environment and is having benefits all the time,” he said.

On today’s podcast, Mr Morton also weighed into the debate about whether the koi herpes virus should be released in Australia’s waterways to eliminate the European carp population, which has exploded after last year’s flooding across southeast of the continent.

“It’s about the decision makers having the courage to actually pull the trigger on it,” Mr Morton said.

“The reality is if you let the carp herpes virus go, there is going to be millions of tonnes of dead fish in our rivers. It’s a case of weighing up do we just want carp in the river forever or are we going to do something about it.

“Someone has got to be brave enough and organised enough to make sure that they manage it the best way they can. But it won’t be pretty if they proceed, but it’s not pretty at the moment with carp wrecking the river system either.”