When in Deniliquin on Tuesday, Minister for Agriculture Adam Marshall said the government is still determining its position on each of the recommendations in the Productivity Commission’s ‘Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Five-year assessment’ report.
Mr Marshall stopped short of giving his own opinion on the specific recommendations, saying it was more a matter for the NSW Minister for Water to discuss.
‘‘I think the Productivity Commission has made some really good recommendations and our government is at the moment going through a process of considering those recommendations, and I would presume the Commonwealth Government is as well,’’ he told the .Pastoral Times
‘‘I will let the Minister for Water, who has carriage of this issue, speak to the government’s position when we determine it, but I can confirm we haven’t yet determined a government position in response to the Productivity Commission report.
‘‘From my perspective I think the work of the Productivity Commission has been quite useful, and the report makes for some very interesting reading.
‘‘I am sure there will be a lot more debate between the states and the Commonwealth as a result of that.’’
As for water for food and fibre production, Mr Marshall said while he could not predict allocations he was confident more water could be on its way.
‘‘There has been an announcement for some allocations already which was the three per cent,’’ Mr Marshall said.
‘‘I presume that if we continue to see very favourable conditions being predicted by the Bureau of Meteorology in terms of a wet winter, then we should see an announcement about future allocations as well.
‘‘I would expect if we have that wet winter everyone is predicting with a lot of confidence, we should see these further announcements made on the back end of winter.’’
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