Environment Minister Plibersek invited to inspect flood devastation

Anthony Roelink, with support from water management group Speak Up Campaign, has invited Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek to visit properties inundated by recent floods.

Mr Roelink, who has lived on his property for 28 years, said many farmers close to the Murray River downstream of Hume Dam were bracing in May for a disaster.

"I started trying to get in contact with people in the second week of May when the Hume Dam was at 96 per cent," Mr Roelink said. "We knew that if we had a decent rain event at the catchments we were going to be in trouble.

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"I got in contact with Sussan Ley (then environment minister), Helen Dalton (member for Murray), and Senator Perin Davey.

"I have gotten together with other farmers and we'll be sending an official request to Tanya Plibersek to invite her out here to see for herself what is happening, what a devastating effect this mismanagement is having on real people."

Mr Roelink said the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's priorities "were all wrong" .

"The way the river has been managed since the Murray-Darling River Basin plan was put together has just been going disastrously backwards," he said.

"With black water events, flooding, trees falling into the river, blue-green algae outbreaks as a result of that, all of these are contributing to the degradation of our river.

"The MDBA's first obigation is to fill the dams, the second is to provide irrigation, the third is to mitigate the risk of flooding downstream - the first overrides the third one when it should be the other way around."

Mr Roelink said ongoing denial by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority should highlight the need for an inquiry, rather than negate it.

He said the MDBA has stated "basin states set the rules for how Hume and Dartmouth dams are managed" and that the MDBA has managed the storages "in line with these arrangements".

"Perhaps these rules need to be reviewed, especially in light of the huge volumes of environmental water that are now being stored in the dams," Mr Roelink said.

In October water management group Speak Up Campaign said farmers were frustrated at being ignored and called for an "overarching review" into the region's water management including the Hume and Dartmouth dams.

The group was speaking after the Inspector-General of Water Compliance, a regulatory body under the federal Environment Department, admitted there were "opportunities and scope for improvement" after a report that surveyed communities in the Murray-Darling Basin showed a "lack of trust and confidence" in how the MDBA was managing the Murray River.

The MDBA said it sympathised with people impacted by the current flooding and "understands the loss of livestock and crops and the damage to properties is devastating".

"Through careful airspace management we have provided significant flood mitigation to communities directly downstream of Hume Dam," MDBA executive director of river management Andrew Reynolds said.

"Over the past six months alone we have carefully pre-released the equivalent of about 200 per cent of Hume Dam's total capacity. Inflow to Hume Dam was the highest on record for October and November with inflow in November more than double the previous record.

"Basin state governments set the rules for how Hume dam is managed, and we have been carefully and closely managing the storages in line with these arrangements. Our priority is keeping the Hume Dam safe, capturing and storing water, and where we can, mitigating floods.

"We have seen unprecedented rainfall and flooding across large parts of the Basin due to the third La Nina event and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole."

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