A meeting of water ministers has descended into acrimony over the final stage of the $13bn Murray-Darling Basin plan, with Victoria and New South Wales joining forces to oppose further buybacks of water and demanding two more years to deliver.
The fiery meeting in Sydney ended with little progress.
Although the official communique said “all parties confirmed their commitment to delivering the plan in full”, attempts to agree on new projects and timetables to meet the June 2024 end of the plan failed.
“Instead of being willing to consider more time and flexibility, federal Labor appears determined to push ahead with reintroducing large-scale water buybacks – a move that could strike a massive blow to Basin communities,” the NSW minister for water, Kevin Anderson, said.
He said NSW had offered to deliver up to 93% of the overall basin plan water recovery target by 2026.
But the federal water minister, Tanya Plibersek, said: “Unlike Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce, we don’t support people picking and choosing the bits of the plan they like, and ignoring the bits they don’t.
“There’s no more time for delays and excuses.”
The commonwealth presented a framework for the 49 gigalitre of new water buybacks it announced this week to complete the “bridging the gap water” task, totalling 2,075GL.
But there are two other parcels of water to be delivered too.
“My hope is that over the coming weeks and months, with a bit of cooperation, compromise and common sense, we can all agree on a way forward,” Plibersek said.
Unless there is a major change in attitude by the next meeting in May, Plibersek will be forced to use her reserve powers under the plan to order more buybacks of water in 2024.
Buybacks are vehemently opposed by irrigators and NSW and Victoria because of the impact they say it will have on farming communities, particularly along the Murray.
Up to 700GL of buybacks could be needed after 2024 to meet the plan’s environmental objectives.
According to insiders, Victoria and NSW failed to present satisfactory commitments for meeting their obligations under the Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment Mechanism (SDLAM).
This is a part of the plan that aims to deliver 605GL of water or water-equivalent outcomes through projects that reduce evaporation and connect river systems so they can run more efficiently or allow better use of environmental flows.
When the plan was agreed, the states argued that this was a better solution than the blunt instrument of buybacks.
But both NSW and Victoria are way behind on their commitments with less than two years to go. Some projects, such as the Menindee Lakes project, designed to save nearly 100GL, will not go ahead.
NSW has put forward its Better Baaka program, but it includes projects such as a new visitor centre at Menindee, which has little to do with saving water.
NSW and Victoria have also refused to re-commit to the final portion of water – 450GL. This amount was meant to be achieved by efficiencies such as lining dams and irrigation ditches, but has so far been an abject failure, with only 4.5GL or 1% of water recovered.
The communique says only that: “the Commonwealth re-iterated its determination to deliver the 450 gigalitres per year of additional environmental water.”
This water was agreed in the dying days of negotiations on the plan in order to get South Australia to sign on to the plan.
“NSW and Victoria are more than happy to leave SA high and dry,” Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.
“The whole point of the this decade-long plan was to return water to the environment to keep the river alive because too much is being taken by big irrigators. There are no jobs on a dead river and rotting fish won’t feed the nation.”
Tyler Rotche, Environment Victoria’s healthy rivers campaigner, said: “The reason South Australia pushed so strongly for this water is that it’s the bare minimum to control salinity in the Coorong. It’s not hypothetical, it’s happened in the past.”
The commonwealth had been hopeful of prising Victoria away from NSW, where the National party has shaped water policy for a decade.
But sources said NSW and Victoria were in lockstep in the meeting.
With a June 2024 deadline for completion of the plan, time is running out.
Under the Water Act, there will be an auditing process by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority at the end of 2023 to determine the shortfalls under the plan.
Adjustments to water buyback targets in each state will be made and the commonwealth will then be empowered to begin more buybacks.
Jacqui Mumford, the chief executive of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, said the state government continued to derail the implementation of the plan.
“Inland rivers don’t have the luxury of extra time that NSW are pushing for. The next drought is coming,” she said.
“It’s great to see the commonwealth remain committed to the plan.”
