However, we must focus on trying to minimise the impact to our community of what is now a done deal. The Coalition committed on Tuesday
to support the plan. The Greens disallowance motion in the Senate failed last night and the disallowance motion moved by Michael McCormack and Sharmon Stone is due to be debated in the House of Representatives today but does not have the numbers to pass.
When we started this process we were looking at three key areas:
1.Water Recovery
a.Lower the target
b.Minimise buyback
c.Focus on infrastructure.
2.Equity
a.All states contribute to recovery
3.Constraints.
While the headline figure is nowhere near low enough, we have seen movement in other areas. We now have written into the Basin Plan an adjustment mechanism that can account for offsets through works and measures AND it has been amended to ensure the Living Murray works can be evaluated as offsets. We also have an acknowledgement by both the Government and the Department that buyback has the potential to negatively impact on communities with Tony Burke committing further funding for infrastructure and being willing to transfer buyback money to infrastructure projects up to the market value of the water. Both the coalition and the NSW Government have committed to a cap on buyback.
The shared recovery target has now been apportioned between the Basin States with South Australia and the ACT required to contribute proportionally. The salinity and water quality targets in the Plan itself are non-mandatory, although there are some modelling objectives that may hinder the environmental works and measures offsets if we don’t watch them closely. There are also some concerning targets related to the Water for the Environement Special Account (which passed the House of Representatives last night) which we must also watch closely.
And finally, we have a commitment for a constraints management strategy to be developed which must look at both local AND downstream impacts. While the Government has committed to funding constraints relaxation, this strategy must be developed first and may identify areas where it is just not feasible to try manage them. This will be an area where we will all need to be vigilant , particularly local government who need to highlight the impact of not only flooding, but maintenance of roads when the sub-soil is constantly wet.
None of this makes it a good Basin Plan - but it is significantly better than where it was when they initially wanted to recover water through a change in reliability with no compensation.
We met with NSW Minister Katrina Hodgkinson today and she was told quite frankly that there is a lot of expectation for the NSW Government to ensure regional communities are not forgotten. She was told to maintain the principle that NSW will not support any changes to rules or river operations that will have negative third-party impacts. She will take our feedback, and of others who attended the meeting, to the MDB Ministerial Council meeting in Canberra tomorrow where they will be discussing the Basin Plan Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) that will be taken to COAG initially next month.
Regards
When we started this process we were looking at three key areas:
1.Water Recovery
a.Lower the target
b.Minimise buyback
c.Focus on infrastructure.
2.Equity
a.All states contribute to recovery
3.Constraints.
While the headline figure is nowhere near low enough, we have seen movement in other areas. We now have written into the Basin Plan an adjustment mechanism that can account for offsets through works and measures AND it has been amended to ensure the Living Murray works can be evaluated as offsets. We also have an acknowledgement by both the Government and the Department that buyback has the potential to negatively impact on communities with Tony Burke committing further funding for infrastructure and being willing to transfer buyback money to infrastructure projects up to the market value of the water. Both the coalition and the NSW Government have committed to a cap on buyback.
The shared recovery target has now been apportioned between the Basin States with South Australia and the ACT required to contribute proportionally. The salinity and water quality targets in the Plan itself are non-mandatory, although there are some modelling objectives that may hinder the environmental works and measures offsets if we don’t watch them closely. There are also some concerning targets related to the Water for the Environement Special Account (which passed the House of Representatives last night) which we must also watch closely.
And finally, we have a commitment for a constraints management strategy to be developed which must look at both local AND downstream impacts. While the Government has committed to funding constraints relaxation, this strategy must be developed first and may identify areas where it is just not feasible to try manage them. This will be an area where we will all need to be vigilant , particularly local government who need to highlight the impact of not only flooding, but maintenance of roads when the sub-soil is constantly wet.
None of this makes it a good Basin Plan - but it is significantly better than where it was when they initially wanted to recover water through a change in reliability with no compensation.
We met with NSW Minister Katrina Hodgkinson today and she was told quite frankly that there is a lot of expectation for the NSW Government to ensure regional communities are not forgotten. She was told to maintain the principle that NSW will not support any changes to rules or river operations that will have negative third-party impacts. She will take our feedback, and of others who attended the meeting, to the MDB Ministerial Council meeting in Canberra tomorrow where they will be discussing the Basin Plan Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) that will be taken to COAG initially next month.
Regards
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