VFF Water Council chair Andrew Leahy said the practice of buying back water from farmers, especially during times of drought was harmful and opportunistic.
“Buying water from farmers during a drought is like preying on them at their most vulnerable,” he said.
Mr Leahy highlighted the long-term consequences of previous buyback schemes during the millennium drought, where many farmers under severe financial pressure sold their water entitlements to make short-term ends meet.
“Many farmers now say they regret those decisions. What seemed like a financial lifeline at the time ultimately left them in a weaker position to deal with future dry periods.”
The VFF has consistently argued that water buybacks reduce agricultural output, drive up the cost of water for remaining farmers, and do little to achieve environmental gains.
Mr Leahy called on the Commonwealth Government to stop focusing on arbitrary water recovery targets and instead shift its attention to meaningful environmental outcomes.
More buybacks ‘catastrophic’
If the Federal Government is serious about increasing productivity to stimulate the economy, it must stop buybacks and keep farmers farming, says Southern Riverina Irrigators.
SRI chief executive officer Sophie Baldwin said the damage to southern Murray-Darling Basin communities from further buybacks will be catastrophic.
“Commodities like dairy, rice and cereals are grown here in the southern basin because of access to affordable irrigation water. Take away that affordability and all of a sudden these Australian grown staples no longer appear on supermarket shelves,” she said.
Ms Baldwin said it was basic supply and demand — as more water leaves the productive pool prices go up, margins decrease and the staple commodities we are so dependent on disappear, along with our farming families who can no longer see a profit or a future.
“Australia will end up being a country growing supposed ‘high value crops” like almonds owned by overseas corporates — our generational farming families and all they produce will be gone.
“If a Labor government is about workers and job creation, they must stop buybacks and look at the real impact they are having on irrigation dependent communities — not some glossed over socialised impact manipulated by distorted data and figures.”
Destroying our nation
The Murray Regional Strategy Group, which represents a range of community and farming organisations across the NSW Murray region, says it is imperative the Federal Government acknowledges the damage of its buybacks and halts further water purchases until additional research is undertaken.
MRSG chair Geoff Moar said communities have almost pleaded with the government to work with them on sustainable solutions that protect both the environment and the production of staple foods on which Australian families rely.
“Food security should be at the top of the national agenda, alongside other important issues such as housing affordability and defence. Yet at present it does not appear to be a government, or even community, priority,” he said.
“If we do not change this thinking we could be heading towards a food security crisis.
“We have the ability in irrigation regions to continue producing food for domestic consumption, with the potential to also grow fodder to assist farmers in drought or flood-affected regions.
“Yet for some inexplicable reason we are putting all this at risk for an environmental ideology that was developed 20 years ago and has not kept pace with changing times and technologies.”
More support needed
State Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell said Victorian Water Minister Gayle Tierney confirmed during parliamentary question time that she had failed to secure a commitment from the Albanese Government to pause the Commonwealth’s purchase of water entitlements.
Ms Lovell said the Ms Tierney had said she “requested from the Commonwealth an absolute pause on buybacks”, and also requested the Commonwealth to “publicly provide the socio-economic impact document” that estimates the effect of its buybacks on regional farming communities.
In question time, Ms Lovell asked whether the minister had been “successful in securing the agreement of the Commonwealth to your two requests?”.
In reply, Ms Tierney confirmed that she had not been able to secure an agreement to pause the buybacks.
Ms Lovell said Ms Tierney “must stand up to the Commonwealth by leading a delegation of Goulburn irrigators and community leaders to Canberra, to bang on the doors of the water minister and prime minister” until the government “understands the devastation they are causing in Victoria with their destructive water policies”.
