During his private members’ motion on Monday, March 20, he also encouraged the government to work with basin communities on projects to recover further water for the environment in a manner that has a neutral or positive socio-economic impact.
The government is currently seeking 49 gigalitres of water from willing sellers in catchments in NSW and Queensland to meet the basin plan’s ‘bridging the gap’ target of 2075Gl of water savings.
Victoria has already met its bridging the gap water recovery target.
Many rural communities and farmer groups fear the current round of buybacks signals the government’s willingness to resort to further buybacks to meet other water recovery targets by the plan’s June 30, 2024, deadline.
This includes 450Gl to be recovered through “efficiency measures” — projects that make agricultural, water delivery and urban water use practices more efficient.
“The Labor Government’s current approach to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan poses an existential crisis to what has been one of the great food bowls of Australia,” Mr Birrell said.
“When water leaves an area, so does the economy that that water creates.
“If a farmer sells a water licence back to the government, the farmer may well be compensated, but the milk or fruit that the farmer once grew, grows no longer, and the (person) employed in the supply chain that gets the product to the consumer is no longer employed, and our nation is poorer in so many ways.”
Mr Birrell said the 450Gl was an add-on to the plan, agreed in 2018 on the basis that any recovery met a social and economic neutrality test.
“A deal is a deal,” Mr Birrell said.
“I understand that any further removal of water will have devastating effects on basin communities: economic destruction, significantly reduced production and damaged export markets.
“That’s the exact opposite of socio-economic neutrality.”
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