Call to safeguard water for agriculture

Apr 11, 2025

The NIC says our nation’s future depends on finding new ways of ensuring sustainability and securing water for agriculture.

The National Irrigators’ Council is urging all parties and independents to commit to securing Australia’s water future and investing in actions to restore our rivers, while supporting agricultural productivity and rural communities.

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NIC chief executive officer Zara Lowien said two decades of water reform means the Australian water management system is world-leading.

“But to secure our nation’s future, we must look to new ways of ensuring sustainability and secure water for agriculture,” she said.

“The industry has made the difficult step changes that established water as a property right, created water sharing arrangements within global standards that can adapt to our variable climate, these steps and more have helped drive water-use efficiency and sustainability.”

Ms Lowien said in the Murray-Darling Basin, this means one in three litres of irrigation water is now returned to the environment, “but it wasn’t without impact”.

“The [Murray-Darling] Basin Plan is a $13 billion investment and irrigation water-dependent basin communities will lose at its completion between $602 million and $914 million per year in economic activity from reduced production,” she said.

“Looking ahead — with population growth, climate variability and extremes, and increased global uncertainty — we must look beyond past solutions to ensure sustainability because water for agriculture will be essential, if we are to optimise Australia’s world-leading water systems and technology to meet future demands for clean, green, affordable food and fibre.

“It’s time to safeguard Australia’s food and fibre future.”

The NIC’s federal election priorities include:

Secure water for agriculture: NIC is seeking support for policies that secure water for agriculture and plan for Australia’s future water and food security, and has welcomed the the proposed National Food Security Strategy.
Restoring our rivers: NIC is seeking $500 million per year over four years to plan and implement a comprehensive action plan that goes beyond simply adding more water to address environmental issues.
Regional Australia benchmarking: NIC is calling for data collection to establish a benchmarking program to monitor and assess the impact of policies on regional and rural communities to ensure effective support for at-risk areas.

For more information, visit: https://www.irrigators.org.au/policy/federal-election-platform/2025-federal-election-platform/