Basin jobs drain

DESPITE five years of consultation, Victorian farm leaders believe the final Murray Darling Basin Plan still risks draining thousands of jobs out of regional Australia. "Irrigators have battled for five years to try and get the least damaging deal on the basin plan," Victorian Farmers Federation president, Peter Tuohey said. "We have achieved the important goal of stopping the Basin plan just being a Federal Government buy-out of irrigation communities' water." VFF Water Council chairman, Richard Anderson said the federation had ensured the plan incorporated a mechanism to count works and measures that utilise environmental water more efficiently. "We've also lobbied the Federal Government to ensure it invested in water savings initiatives such as the northern Victorian Food Bowl project," Mr Anderson said. "We've been successful in lobbying for the development of a Sustainable Diversion Limit adjustment mechanism, to ensure that water savings from environmental works and measures and better management of the river system can reduce the volume that has to be recovered from irrigators. "I think we've done a good job, but that doesn't negate the fact that we face having to deliver the equivalent of 2750 billion litres of water to the environment. "However, we remain concerned that Mr Burke has an amendment to the Water Act waiting in the wings, which would effectively raise the basin plan target to 3200 billion litres." Mr Anderson said everyone needed to be reminded just how much water the environment was already getting. "It's the simple fact that the environment already gets two-thirds of the water flowing into the basin," he said. "Irrigated agriculture only diverts 10,903 billion litres, out of the 32,553 billion litres that flows into the Basin's rivers and wetlands on average each year." "Given the environment already gains such a huge share of the basin's water, it's been the VFF's goal to ensure that water is used more efficiently."