Basin attack: Tidal wave of water buyouts about to hit irrigation communities

Canberra is poised to launch a tidal wave of irrigation community water buyouts at the urging of environment groups.

Almost a quarter of all jobs evaporated across the Murray Darling Basin’s south in the wake of the millennium drought and former Rudd-Gillard Labor Government water buyouts.

The federal government is about to unleash a tidal wave of water buyouts across the southern Murray Darling Basin, after refusing to extend a critical deadline on NSW and Victoria using environmental works and measures to recover the water instead.

Delays in federal funding allocations, followed by Covid lockdowns and floods, have meant Victoria and NSW are 340 gigalitres short on delivering 605 gigalitres of environmental water efficiency gains, which they are unable to deliver by next year’s June 30 deadline.

Many of these Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment Mechanism projects use regulators, pumps and small levees to direct environmental flows across flood plains, rather than relying on less frequent overbank flows that require rivers to be in flood.

Environment groups have branded the SDLAM projects “dodgy”, and put pressure on federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek to simply buy the 340-gigalitre shortfall out of irrigation communities, plus another 450 gigalitres of upwater.

But irrigators warn the push to strip up to another 790 gigalitres of water out of irrigation communities risks draining the basin of thousands of jobs.

“It’s about achieving an ideological objective, with no regrets and no care,” National Irrigators’ Council chair Jeremy Morton said.

“Every megalitre they pull out of communities will cut jobs and our annual food production.”

Victorian Water Minister Harriet Shing halted work on 60 gigalitres of the state’s SDLAM projects last week, due to being unable to deliver the projects by the deadline.

Victorian Water Minister Harriett Shing wants federal funds to complete works and measures to deliver environmental water offsets, not buyouts. But Canberra holds the purse strings.

Ms Plibersek failed to answer a direct question on why she had refused to extend the June 30, 2024 deadline.

Environment groups from every basin state have banded together to call on Ms Plibersek to dump the SDLAM projects and “stand up to NSW and Victoria by purchasing water as the only cost-effective, practical way to return water to rivers”.

South Australian Water Minister Susan Close said “given the failed or withdrawn projects in both NSW and Victoria, and the likely scale of the overall SDLAM shortfall, it is expected to trigger a need for additional Basin Plan-related water recovery in all three of the southern Basin states … including in South Australia”.

South Australian Water Minister Susan Close says “if a SDLAM deadline extension is to be entertained, then all parties are going to require confidence that the full Plan will actually be delivered within the revised time frame”.

Environment Victoria Healthy Rivers campaigner Tyler Rotche said the SDLAM projects were dodgy and dubious: “At this point, the most efficient use of taxpayer’s money is to purchase real water for the river.”

The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists has long opposed the SDLAM projects, with member Jamie Pittock recently saying the states were “effectively using paper water for greenwashing”.

The Wentworth Group has also repeatedly called for the legislated 1500-gigalitre cap on buyouts, introduced by the former Coalition Government, to be repealed to allow more buyouts, which will in turn force up prices.

Yet as of January 31 this year, Wentworth Group founder and director Rob Purves held $8 million of shares in one of the Basin’s biggest water speculators – Duxton Water, which is set to see the value of its water entitlements soar on the back of more federal buyouts.

Last year Mr Purves earned at least $300,000 in dividends on his 4.67 million Duxton Water shares and donated $100,000 to the Wentworth Group through his Purves Environmental Fund.

Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists director Robert Purves says his ownership of Duxton Water shares poses no potential conflict of interest.

Mr Purves has previously stated his ownership of Duxton Water shares and role with the Wentworth Group “are consistent with my longer-term commitment to the health of the environment and my passion for regional communities where I farm”.

Meanwhile irrigators say taking any further water out of communities, on top of more than 2000 gigalitres already recovered, could see thousands of jobs lost.

MDB Authority research shows almost a quarter of all jobs evaporated across the Murray Darling Basin’s south, from 2001 to 2016, in the wake of the millennium drought and former Rudd-Gillard Labor Government buyouts.

Mr Morton said buying up 340 gigalitres to meet the SDLAM shortfall was equivalent to wiping out almost all of South Australia’s water use or that of the Lower Murray Water irrigation district, which forms part of Australia’s richest food bowl.

Add to that the 450 gigalitres of upwater, and NIC chief executive Isaac Jeffrey said people would lose their jobs, businesses would close and “this time every Australian will also pay more at the checkout”.

“Around 25 per cent of the water used to grow our food and fibre is at risk. That’s 25 per cent less water to grow fruit, nuts, grapes, wine, vegetables, cotton, cereals and dairy.

NSW Irrigators Council chief executive Claire Miller said “less water at higher prices for growing food and fibre has cost communities jobs and weakened their resilience to survive droughts.

“If governments are not careful, we’ll end up with ghost towns, and only escalate the serious social issues facing many of these communities.”