The Southern Basin has done its share
76 per cent. That's the share of every gigalitre the Federal Government has stripped out of the Murray Darling Basin that's come from the Southern Basin. The Murray, the Murrumbidgee, the Goulburn and the Lower Darling have carried more than three quarters of every cut and every emptied main street the Basin Plan has cost in thirteen years.
Last week Murray Watt came back for another $276 million, and almost all of it is coming out of the same communities from Lake Boga and Swan Hill, through Shepparton and Katunga, down to Narrandera, Griffith and Yenda. Every dollar is paid by every Australian taxpayer, and every megalitre is stripped out of the country between Echuca and Wentworth.
Three quarters of the tomato processing workforce around Swan Hill was cut the same month the water that fed them was sold to the Commonwealth. Dairy aggregations in the Goulburn Valley have been shut down for the water while local milk producers walk off the land, and almond and citrus operations in the Riverina are selling water out from under permanent plantings to chase the next buyback cheque.
Bourke has lost 42 per cent of its population since 2000 and the mayor blames the buybacks directly. The 2020 Independent Assessment found 10,801 jobs gone from Basin communities, with 30 per cent of them directly tied to water recovery, and every extra month of extreme drought lifts the rural suicide rate across the Murray and Murrumbidgee primary health network by 32 per cent. Our towns wear that cost while the gigalitres keep being signed away.
Murray Watt, Tanya Plibersek, Chris Minns and Rose Jackson, you are spending taxpayer money to wear out the same communities that have already done three quarters of the work. The Southern Basin has done its share, so take the next gigalitre out of somewhere else, or stop taking it altogether and audit where the last 76 per cent has actually gone.
After thirteen billion dollars, NSW Parliament's own report says nobody can tell you how much water has been recovered, which is why we need a Federal Royal Commission into Australian water with witnesses under oath, every beneficial owner named on the record, and the full subsidy trail behind every flipped property on the table.
Sign the call.
