HOW CAN THE GOVERNMENT NOT KNOW MUCH WATER IT OWNS?

Independent Member for Murray, Helen Dalton, says she is shocked by recent findings that the Federal and

NSW State Government’s don’t know how much water they own.

The NSW Parliamentary Committee on Investment, Industry and Regional Development has just released

key findings into the Murray Darling Basin.

Amongst the findings is that the Federal and State Governments don’t know how much water has been

recovered for the environment through water reforms.

“How is this even possible?” Helen asked. “Here we are facing savage water buybacks that are destroying

rural Australia, and the Governments don’t even know how much water they’ve taken from us.”

“Surely they should work out how much water they have got before they try and take any more,” Helen said.

The Parliamentary Committee has also concluded that water buybacks are causing socio-economic harms,

especially when they are concentrated in certain rural areas.

The Committee has recommended that the NSW Government continues to oppose water buybacks until the

socio-economic impacts are better understood. The Committee also recommended that other options for

water recovery should be explored.

“These findings should mean the end of water buybacks once and for all,” Helen said. “Whenever water

leaves a property in a rural area, it damages the entire area.”

Ms Dalton recently proposed a Bill that would create a website that showed exactly how much

environmental water the State and Commonwealth Governments currently control.

“It’s no wonder the State Government was against this website,” Helen said.

“We now know that the Federal and Sate Governments don’t know how much water they have, and they

don’t understand the harm they are doing with these devastating buybacks.”

Ms Dalton believes the State and Commonwealth Governments already have 4600 gigalitres of

environmental water and don’t need any more.

“Premier Chris Minns has already said he doesn’t support the buybacks, but what he really needs to do is to

actively work to stop any buybacks from happening anywhere in NSW.”

“The more we learn about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, the more we realise it’s a plan to fail and it must

be scrapped,” Helen said.