Water buybacks will be a thing of the past in a major management shake-up of the country's largest river system.
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Federal Water Minister Keith Pitt announced a new approach to the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan yesterday, promising an upgrade in infrastructure for irrigators to compensate for the end of the water buyback scheme.
Mr Pitt also announced $34 million will be invested to extend the Murray-Darling Basin Economic Development Fund, "to provide support to communities hit by water recovery to create a better and more diverse economic future".
"I'm launching an action plan to refresh our commitment to the future of communities in the Murray Darling Basin. I want to rebalance the system, not just through the blunt tool of water buy-backs," Mr Pitt said in a Farm Writers NSW webinar.
"The first action is to put communities back at the centre of the Murray-Darling Basin."
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Speak Up chair Shelley Scoullar said it was refreshing to hear a person in authority in the water space who was prepared to admit that changes were needed to basin plan implementation.
"As a community organisation, it was especially gratifying to get acknowledgement of what we have been saying for many years - that communities are not being listened to," she said.
"Hopefully today will be a 'line in the sand' moment when this will be rectified.
"It is a step in the right direction."
The Murray Darling Association welcomed the government's overhaul calling it "a win for local communities and for the environment".
"The buyback scheme had the best intentions, but as a means of achieving sustainable environmental water recovery it didn't work. It created division, pitting communities and the environment against each other," chief executive Emma Bradbury said.
"The two greatest challenges to the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan were policies that recovered water for the environment at a direct cost to community wellbeing, and disjointed oversight that eroded local confidence in the plan."
Mr Pitt also said stripped the Murray-Darling Basin Authority from checking compliance with the river management plan and handed it to the Inspector-General of Murray-Darling Basin Water Resources who will assume responsibility for the revamped scheme under the new title Inspector- General of Water Compliance.
It isn't known if former AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty would head up the new office.
- Rural news P33