In effect, making a dry year drier for food producers.
However, the mindless stupidity of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan does not only play out in dry years.
In wet years, like the one we are experiencing, the CEWH in conjunction with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority will either push thousands of gigalitres more water down a fragile river system or take up precious dam capacity for upcoming years, which directly reduces future drought-proofing for food producers — doing precisely the opposite of what our forefathers built this irrigation infrastructure for.
In short, we continue to endure a policy which makes dry years drier for food producers, and exacerbates environmental damage in record wet years like the current one.
As a final point just to reassure all readers we have reached peak madness when it comes to water policy in this country — the much-discussed ‘450 gigalitres’ was only ever supposed to be returned to the environment if it could be proven that no further socio-economic damage would be imposed on irrigation communities.
The current Federal Government has now made it clear that they will dismiss the damage already done to communities, and worse, pursue a further 450 Gl for “the environment”.
Policy-makers need to understand that in order to push this additional amount of water down the river, all major rivers would need to run at a minor flood level, all-year-round.
Government will then have created a completely unnatural scenario where both environmental damage is caused, and food production would be further jeopardised, due to increased water insecurity.
While many Australians are tearing their hair out at a potential increase in electricity costs of 50 per cent over the next 18 months, consider family farming food producers battling both higher electricity prices and further water insecurity in dry years.
I call on all policy makers to look at this situation and do better.
The status quo is a hodge-podge of Band-Aids built on a fundamentally flawed, unadaptable, water volume-based system — which unbelievably manages to consistently fail every single stakeholder.
Steve Brooks, Cobram
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