Farmer react to fresh plans to save Murray-Darling river
Known as the nation's food bowl, the Murray Darling Basin produces billions of dollars of tourism, food, and fibre every year. It is home to internationally recognised wetlands and provides drinking water to three million Australians. It's facing an uncertain future, which the government hopes can be saved through buying water from farmers to boost the environment. But farmers claim it would come at the expense of jobs and regional communities.
Transcript
00:00 Greenshoots, a sign of future fruits. But Frank De Marci says he can't grow a crop without
00:07 one key ingredient, water. The more people can use that ingredient wisely
00:14 to produce wealth and taxes for the country and for their families.
00:19 He fears the federal government's plan to buy water from farmers will mean less food
00:24 and fewer growers. Once you sell water, you're really out of
00:28 the game. A buyback happens when a farmer sells their
00:31 water licence back to the government. It means water previously used for farming is instead
00:38 left in the rivers. If we don't leave enough water for fish to
00:42 breed, for water birds to breed and for rivers to flush salt out to the ocean, we actually
00:48 end up with a declining river system. There's less water so you can grow less things
00:53 like broccoli and milk and all of these things that we value.
00:56 The decade-old plan has already delivered more than 2100 gigalitres of water per year
01:01 for the environment. But another 750 gigalitres per year was promised by June 2024 and it's
01:08 running drastically behind. Tanya Plibersek now wants to change the law
01:12 to allow more time and to use voluntary buybacks to find that water.
01:18 This next step is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
01:21 Laundry owner Rob Priestley worries about the impact on jobs.
01:25 This is going to cost thousands of jobs in regional Australia and you can't compensate
01:29 for that with some silo art or a bike path. In South Australia, Karen Martin says some
01:35 farmers might be keen to sell. If your business isn't doing so well or you're
01:40 hitting retirement age and you've just had enough.
01:43 Buybacks if allowed could cost taxpayers billions of dollars and have implications far beyond
01:49 the basin. All Australians have something at stake here.
01:54 Ensuring a national resource is managed in the national interest.
01:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]