"Suffering towns" across the region have spurred-on yet another call for a Royal Commission into the Murray Darling Basin Authority's management of water.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Murray Darling Basin Plan, Tim Quilty said on Sunday, "has failed the communities of northern Victoria".
The Liberal Democrats MP and former Wodonga councillor said it was "not good enough" either for the Victorian government to ignore the "problem".
"The Murray Darling Basin Plan is managed federally, but Victorians are suffering," the Member for Northern Victoria said in a statement.
"It doesn't stack up on social, environmental or economic grounds."
IN OTHER NEWS:
Mr Quilty was joined in his call for the Royal Commission by his Melbourne colleague David Limbrick.
That came as Senator Hanson-Young toured the Murray region, which stands to have zero allocations for the second year in a row.
Mr Quilty and Mr Limbrick based their own call on what they labeled an "explosive" new scientific paper on the issue.
This, they said, "suggests the rationale for the plan could be entirely wrong".
The peer-reviewed research paper, by Professor Peter Gell in CSIRO's Journal of Pacific Conservation Biology, examined the origins of the rationale for the plan.
They said this cost "billions of dollars" to ensure Lake Alexandrina was kept "unnaturally fresh", leading to the evaporation of the equivalent of 900 gigalitres - or nearly two Sydney Harbours worth of fresh water - from the lower lakes each year.
"The paper suggests the historical record of Lake Alexandrina as a natural salt water estuary may have been downplayed in non-peer reviewed research which formed the basis for the plan."
They said that in addition to apparent discrepancies between scientific reports, there needed to be an urgent investigation into conflicts of interest among politicians and bureaucrats, and the environmental return on investment.
"A few people have gotten rich on taxpayers' money," Mr Quilty said.
"But our towns are suffering because so much fresh water is being sent down the river for little or no environmental or any other benefit."
Receive our daily newsletter straight to your inbox each morning from The Border Mail. Sign up here