It comes despite recent acknowledgement from river operators that current recovery volumes cannot be delivered, and will not deliver, any of the legislated enhanced environmental outcomes under the basin plan.
SRI chair Peter McDonald said if this “madness” continues, there will be no water left for staple food production in this country, and all the irrigation dependent towns and communities across the southern basin will turn to dust.
Mr McDonald said this call for more water comes on the back of the release of the first round of 70GL of buybacks under the Restoring our Rivers Bill which target the food bowl of our nation - the southern basin.
“We have the Albanese government chasing 450 gigalitres via buybacks that will decimate our rural communities, along with proposed changes to the management of Menindee which will impact the shared resource and therefore New South Wales and Victorian allocations in the future, and then we have this call from the Wentworth Group – it is just does not make sense.
Mr McDonald said the river system only has a certain capacity with constraints at Barmah, Goulburn and Tumut impacting delivery volumes across the system
“The upper Murray is collapsing under current delivery volumes now; imagine what mess they will create if they continue to push even more water down to the bottom of the system and out to sea at South Australia.
“South Australians themselves are even starting to question the logic,” he said.
Mr McDonald said at the end of the day everyone wants a healthy and sustainable river system, but we must continue to grow food for our nation and we need to look at getting the balance right.
“Remember those COVID days when it took months and months to get anything delivered and how that cost of delivery went through the roof? Well that will become our everyday reality for staple foods if we don’t see some common sense return.
“Irrigation right across the basin from the north through to the south supports biodiversity on farm – providing food sources, environmental watering opportunities, wetland protection and revegetation, if we lose the irrigation footprint all these environmental opportunities will be lost along with economic wealth, manufacturing and job opportunities.”
Mr McDonald said cost of living pressures will only increase when we lose irrigation dependent industry like rice and dairy.
“This madness will impact every single Australian, from the price you pay in the supermarket, to employment and GDP – rice and dairy are only the beginning, horticulture, livestock and cropping will follow suit as the cost to deliver water to those that remain becomes too expensive and unsustainable.”
In its Blueprint to Repair Australia’s Landscapes, the Wentworth Group proposes a suite of “24 practical actions and investments, across five key environmental asset groups, to repair Australia’s degraded landscapes”.
One is to “Return overallocated river systems of the Murray-Darling Basin to environmentally sustainable levels of surface water extraction through the strategic purchase of water licences from willing sellers, on-farm investment, and other measures”.
The report states that “At least 10 surface water systems across Australia have been identified as being under high levels of stress and therefore likely to be at high risk of overallocation or overuse, including six within the Murray-Darling Basin”.
“Climate change effects on hydrology and water demand are highly likely to aggravate this stress and further threaten water security in these catchments as well as others (Prosser et al., 2021),” the report reads.
“The action specified here focuses on restoring over-allocated rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin to sustainable levels of take so that basic ecological functions can be supported including provision of safe drinking water, reducing salinity for viable irrigation industries, and discharging salt and sediment to the sea through an open Murray mouth.
“This action will also support the capacity of river systems to maintain these functions under the drier future projected.
“The best publicly available estimate suggests that an environmentally sustainable level of water extraction from the Murray-Darling Basin requires the recovery of between 3,856 GL (high uncertainty) and 6,983 GL (low uncertainty) of surface water from consumptive use (MDBA, 2010).
“A total of 2,107.4 GL/y has been recovered in the Murray-Darling Basin as of 30 June 2023 (MDBA, 2023). An additional 1,022 GL/y of water or equivalent outcomes therefore needs to be secured under the Basin Plan to reach the current Basin Plan target of 3,130GL/y (i.e., 3,200GL/y less 70GL/y from the northern Basin adjustment).”
The Wentworth Group’s full report can be viewed on their website, www.wentworthgroup.org.
