Speak Up for Water slammed interim Inspector General Mick Keelty for stepping down

Budget estimates heard Mick Keelty's one-year term as interim Inspector-General for the Murray Darling Basin ran out in September and he did not seek to extend his tenure. The department are looking for a replacement.

Speak Up for Water's deputy chair Lachlan Marshall, a dairy farmer in Finley, said Mr Keelty had left before anything meaningful had been achieved.

He claimed the appointment was "obviously just a ploy" by former Water Minister David Littleproud to appease angry irrigators after the Convoy to Canberra.

"To say we've had a gutful of governments playing with our livelihoods and communities is an understatement," he said.

"I don't think Littleproud and his government cohorts had any intention of trying to bring about the changes that are needed.

"They were faced by thousands of angry protesters in Canberra and to keep us quiet they promised us the world but have again delivered nothing."

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Mr Keelty visited Albury and communities along the Murray earlier this year and told a town hall meeting in February the 'revolving door of ministers had not helped' the water situation.

"This is not the first and last inquiry I am here for the longer term," he told the Albury meeting.

Mr Marshall wants Mr Keelty replaced with a "fair dinkum Inspector-General who will work with us to call out faults in the Basin Plan and help get them fixed."

"What they do not understand is that farmers and communities who were given some hope have been left devastated," he said.

"Let down again by a political system that prioritises attracting city votes over hard-working farmers and the communities which rely on them," he said.

"In reality, many of us were shell-shocked at the failure of the Keelty report to deliver the solutions we thought would be forthcoming, though now we understand he was probably only doing what he was told."