One Nation Senator Roberts expressed sheer disbelief and disappointment with the Keelty report into the Murray Darling Basin’s water allocations to farmers who need water to grow food.
Senator Roberts said, “As the nation reels from COVID-19 and faces food shortages this report is woefully inadequate and a tragic waste of taxpayers’ money. “
“An investigation should demonstrate rigour and analysis and instead Mr Keelty’s report is full of inadequacies.”
The report fails to include in its datasets this year’s substantial rainfall event and does not acknowledge rainfall within the MDB has increased over the past 100 years. Instead the Keelty analysis deceitfully uses ‘declining inflows’ as a way of arguing why farmers should be denied a fair allocation of water.
When 4000 disenchanted farmers descended on Canberra to protest the unfair allocation of water between the environment and farmers, they were promised that their zero allocations would be the subject of this review.
“It is deeply disappointing, particularly now when our agricultural productive capacity is under-utilised, that this issue was not rigorously examined by Mr Keelty. Astonishingly the report fails to even mention those zero allocations,” added Senator Roberts.
As predicted by many farmers, the former Water Minister David Littleproud used the promise of an investigation into the MDB to quieten the crowd of protestors and conveniently shift blame to the States and irrigators.
Irrigators are suspicious of MDBA figures that show declining inflows when the Murray River has been running so high that environmental damage has resulted along the upper Murray and Barmah/Millewa forest from excessive water.
Disturbingly the report claims that environmental water is not being wasted, ignoring the unnecessary flooding of forests, excess water flushed out to sea in South Australia and keeping the lower lakes filled above their natural levels with Murray River water.
“The report may as well have been written by the MDBA itself, as it addresses none of the concerns from farmers, some of which have gone without a water allocation for 3 years.”
COVID-19 has highlighted the critical importance of Australia restoring our productive capacity across many strategic industries, including our agricultural sector.
“The Keelty report’s lack of due diligence in this investigation is akin to the last nail in the coffin of one of Australia’s most substantial food bowls. No water, no food,” Senator Roberts added.
Unsurprisingly, the report found that a lack of trust and leadership worsened the problems. One Nation calls for a Royal Commission into misconduct in the implementation of the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
“Trust cannot be restored until rorting has been exposed and fixed. Australia needs management of the MDB Plan that reflects a genuine triple benefit – for irrigators, communities and the environment,” Senator Roberts stated.
The recent bushfires, some rains and now the CoronaVirus has taken attention away from farmers still struggling with drought or the Murray Darling Basin plan which is still failing to deliver water to farmers.
One Nation has not forgotten about our farmers and is still fighting for a fair and equitable allocation of water.
In this video I give a quick summary of my investigation so far and then an update on what we are continuing to do behind the scenes to restore the productive capacity of regional Australia.
TRANSCRIPT
Some people recently have asked us for an update on what we’re doing in the Murray-Darling Basin. It’s still a very very important issue. Just because some rains have come does not mean it’s over yet. There’s a long way to go. So I’ll just first of all, remind people of what we’ve done. Back in 2017 in February, I listened to people in the Ballone Shire Council, in their chambers in St. George and they told us about the devastation due to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the plan in Southern Queensland around the border and Northern New South Wales.
We listened to those people and we saw that they were right. Then we went as a result of that. Pauline and I went down the whole Murray River, right down to the barrages and the river mouth and we learned quite a bit from irrigators and farmers in northern Victoria, Southern New South Wales and South Australia. Then I got knocked out of the Senate and we were about to continue doing a lot more. When I came back in, the first thing we did, was start to understand the Murray-Darling Basin again.
So, we first of all did an overflight. We took off from Albury went right down the Murray River, down around the lower lakes, the Coorong and then up to Mildura, then up the entire Darling and then flew to the north of the basin above Charleville and then came back to Goondiwindi and then over the Clarence River catchment area, and then down the centre of the basin and actually back to Mungundi and then down the centre and then to Albury. We got a good overview of the whole lot. Wasn’t much water anyway, because it was so dry.
Then we went on the ground and we went to Southern Queensland, Northern New South Wales listening to people; irrigators, communities, businesses. We then went down, flew down to Adelaide and went down the lower lakes, the Coorong, then back up through the irrigated areas and non irrigated areas of South Australia, then along the Murray listening to people in southern New South Wales, Northern Victoria. And then we went along the Murrumbidgee.
And we went down the Murrumbidgee and partly under the Murray again, then up the Darling and ended up at Broken Hill. We’ve got a little bit more travelling to do, a little bit more listening with people on the ground in Central and New South Wales. And we’ve also got a few issues that we want resolved. But most importantly, we want to listen now to some experts. These are not technical experts as such, not because they’ve got, they’re not experts because they’ve got initials after their name or they’ve got a title.
These are experts, like former people in the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. Highly regarded. People who’ve done a lot of research, a lot of experience in the area. We want to listen to them, and then we pull it all together. But just now I just want to bring you up to date with a few things. First of all, the need for trust. There’s very little trust. Why? Because there’s so little data, there’s so little openness, there’s so little listening from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
And as a result, people are blaming each other between the regions. The flood harvesters in Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland are blaming South Australia. South Australians are blaming everyone. Southerners in New South Wales and Victoria are blaming the Northerners and South Australia. And we’ve been told that we will get a water registry. Well, the federal government has had eight years to do that and still hasn’t got a water registry.
So what we’re doing is, we’re calling on the federal government to put in place a water registry in 12 months over the next 12 months. You should should be able to do that in a year. The data is largely there. But it needs to be part of a larger watering reporting system comprising the whole basin so we know where the water is coming in, we know where the water is being stored and we know where it’s flowing out. That’s essential. So that people have an understanding, a transparent understanding of the water flows.
The second thing. We want irrigation water to be treated somewhat as environmental water. The losses in irrigation water flow into the environment. Some of the irrigation water itself flows into the environment. So what we’re calling for, is carriage losses in irrigation water to be treated as environmental water because it ends up in the environment. Third thing as part of that by the way, we want farmers to be recognised that they are protecting the environment.
Their experience, their own livelihoods and the future value of their land depends upon them taking care of it. These people are the guardians of the land. Instead of being seen, treated as villains, they need to be treated as guardians of the land. The fourth thing we want is integrity. We want to restore integrity to the Basin. There is corruption.
We know that! Some of the irrigation authorities have a lot at stake and some of the people are telling us around the Basin that some irrigation authorities are corrupt. And with the amount of money involved, it’s easy to see how that could happen. And we know that some people have become very very wealthy as a result. So what we’re calling for is a Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission. Now what we’ve got to do, I just told you, we’ve still got a little bit more to do.
And then what we’ll do is we’ll put a plan out to the whole community. We’ve already released based upon our early understandings at the water convoy. Last year we released our basic plan. It was just a discussion paper, to get people’s feedback. That will become the basis of a policy. It is not our policy yet, but we will, we’ve got a little bit more work to do and then we will restore water to the farmers through a policy that we’ll be releasing to everyone. The plan ultimately is to restore water to the farmers and have a solid sustainable Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
