THE Basin Communities Association (BCA) has delivered a stern message to Canberra about the key findings from its recently completed consultation meetings throughout the Murray Darling Basin.
Eight independent, impartial consultation forums were held in April and early May including at Griffith in NSW, St George in QLD, Goolwa in SA and Mildura in Victoria, with about 200 people attending.
The qualitative study was designed to uncover the best criteria for developing a more comprehensive water management plan within the Basin.
Chief facilitator, Toby Ralph, summarised the qualitative study’s findings by saying Basin communities and related businesses wanted to see more balance, detail, local input, broader solutions, transparency, certainty and a clear rationale for water planning, than what had so far been revealed through the Murray Darling Basin Authority’s planning processes.
Mr Ralph said the BCA’s consultation was highly representative, with most of the 200 attendees speaking on behalf of 20 to 30 other people, within their different groups.
“A guy stood up in Griffith and he said, ‘I’ve had wetlands which have been dry for eight years but since the drought has broken, they have water in them again and guess what, they are thick with fish, they’ve got wading birds, there are plenty of insects and when you go outside in the evening you can’t hear yourself talk over the sounds of the frogs’,” Mr Ralph said.
“That was a very consistent message across many communities.
“It just seems an extraordinary conceit, for many people, that a government department in Canberra imagines it can manage the environment better than nature.”
BCA spokesman, Andrew Gregson, said his group could now say, with some authority, “here is what communities and businesses and everybody involved, from St George to Goolwa, think”.
“We made it pretty clear to everybody all we were looking for were the common threads,” he said.
“If there was disagreement anywhere or power of veto as it were, if someone said something that others disagreed with, it’s not in this report.
“All that’s in this document is what was agreed by people from one end of the Basin to the other.”
Mr Ralph and Mr Gregson unveiled the report’s findings to various politicians and government officials in Canberra, including MDBA Chairman, Craig Knowles, Water Minister, Tony Burke, and Shadow Water Minister, Barnaby Joyce.
Mr Gregson said the MDBA Chairman described the report as being “entirely consistent” with what Basin communities had already told him, since his appointment earlier this year.
“That means we have got it right,” Mr Gregson said.
The BCA was formed by local government, business groups, chambers of commerce, large farming and agricultural operators and agricultural irrigators and processors, immediately following the release of the MDBA’s Guide to a draft Basin Plan last October.
The Guide caused extreme outrage within Basin communities after proposing substantial and dramatic cuts to water entitlements in the Basin, to provide more water for environmental uses.
But the Authority failed to adequately outline the social and economic impacts of those water cuts on Basin communities, or how and where the water savings would be used.
Mr Gregson said the BCA’s membership was comprehensive and irrigators, who have sparked the loudest opposition to the MDBA’s Guide, were in the vast minority.
He said the BCA was formed to provide a single consistent and effective voice for Basin business and communities and the report showed that goal had been achieved.
Mr Gregson said it was “very useful” to now have a clear and concise report owned by everyone within the river system.
The report says primarily, Basin communities are “deeply concerned” that an ill-considered Basin Plan would cost tens of thousands of jobs, not just for family farmers but for corner shops, schools, doctors, truck drivers, pubs and hundreds of other non-farm businesses.
The MDBA has conducted its own analysis into the economic and social impacts of the Guide’s proposed water cuts but has yet to release its complete findings.
An MDBA spokesperson said no date had been set as yet, for the release of the socio-economic report.
The Basin Plan is due out mid-year followed by 16 weeks of formal community consultation.
Providing further detail of the BCA report’s key messages, Mr Ralph said Basin communities wanted a clear and concise explanation of exactly why water needed to be taken from them, what it would be used for, why it was necessary and what it would achieve.
He said the government had completely failed to make the case for environmental water use, so far in the water planning debate, but needed to because water reductions would have a massive impact on Basin communities.
Mr Ralph said Basin communities wanted equal balance between environmental and social and economic responsibilities; or the much vaunted triple bottom line outcome.
But if that balance was unachievable, they wanted compensation for their losses, which has been a silent aspect of the debate, so far.
“These people care deeply about the environment but not at the exclusion of everything else,” he said.
“Importantly, people are saying, if communities have to close and if businesses, including non irrigator businesses, are going to be ruined by this change in policy, if society determines we are going to give water to frogs instead of farmers, then those people whose businesses are going to close as a consequence of that policy change, deserve some kind of compensation.
“And that’s not even being talked about anywhere
“Water is the lifeblood of rural communities along the Basin and if you cut it off everyone will suffer.
“People are saying they want more detail and they are deeply concerned there’s a metropolitan political agenda going on that may do deep harm and it doesn’t help.”
Mr Ralph said the accuracy of the report’s findings was reflected by Mr Knowles telling him and Mr Gregson that its contents were, “entirely consistent with what he’s heard”.
The rural communities were also frightened by the fact that the government department with overarching responsibility for climate change, and therefore water planning measures, had also delivered the failed pink batts program.
“That came up many times,” he said, in reference to the BCA’s consultation.
“Basin communities are saying, ‘look, you are not just burning a couple of houses, you could burn whole communities here’,” he said.
“They are saying, ‘we have not been able to have local input into the water planning process but experts fly in and tell us how it’s going to be and they clearly don’t understand what’s happening on the ground. We have over 100 years of experience dealing with our local environment and our expertise should be tapped into but it’s not being used’.”
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