Irrigators have welcomed a breakthrough Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council meeting in Mildura, where agreement was reached on the terms of reference for an independent analysis of socio-economic impacts of the plan in the southern Basin.
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It means water buybacks would not be the default approach for the MDBA to reach a revised 650Gl recovery target.
Instead, efficiency gains such as infrastructure improvements would now be used against the targets.
“It is a big deal because if we didn’t do that we’d be asking you for 650,000 megalitres of water and we’ll start buying it from around here,” Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources Barnaby Joyce told a National Party conference in Griffith at the weekend.
“If that happened you could just say goodbye to sections of Griffith, goodbye to sections of Deniliquin.
“Your economy would be absolutely RS and there’s nothing you could do about it because that’s the legislation.”
The southern Riverina produces about 10 per cent of Australia’s irrigated agriculture production, including 99 per cent of Australia’s rice crop, 40 per cent of all irrigated cereal production and 11 per cent of all irrigated cotton production.
Riverina farmers were among the most water efficient for production per hectare in the world.
“We definitely punch above our weight in the southern Riverina,” Murray Irrigation’s Perin Davey told the Griffith conference.
National Farmers Federation water taskforce chair Les Gordon said the water uncertainty had shattered some rural communities.
“There’s a lot of work to do, it is all in front of us but that pathway, that endpoint and hopefully an end to the damage that’s has been done to our communities is now there,” he said.
