Former Northern Basin Advisory Committee chair and head of NSW Farmers Association Mal Peters has questioned the effectiveness of a national review of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, announced by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday.
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Mr Turnbull has requested the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) consider conducting a national Basin-wide Compliance Review and Water Minister Barnaby Joyce will this week write to his state counterparts seeking their agreement for the MDBA to carry out a basin-wide compliance probe of the state-based regulations that govern water use.
“It’s a good step in the right direction, but not enough,” Mr Peters said.
The review will consider the effectiveness of the current state rules and laws, as well as the adequacy of water measurement and monitoring.
However, Mr Peters questions the MDBA’s role in conducting the review process, considering it has failed to publish Cap (the cap on water diversions for each river valley in the Basin) reports since 2011.
“They’re required to do [Cap reports] annually,” Mr Peters said.
“Those Cap reports would report all those issues that they’re going to investigate in this review.
“The rules are there, the states aren’t doing it.
“The states are the ones that do the compliance, so if the states don’t want to do compliance it doesn’t happen.
“That review won’t establish anything. All it appears to me is a way of putting the whole issue under the carpet.”
Mr Peters believes a judicial inquiry, or Royal Commission, is the only way to restore confidence in the system in the wake of water theft allegations made during the ABC’s Four Corners report, which aired last week.
That review won’t establish anything. All it appears to me is a way of putting the whole issue under the carpet.
- Mal Peters
“There’s got to be a royal commission because it needs some really strong recommendations to the states to make sure the states and government departments change the way they behave,” he said.
“NSW is the one being highlighted in the Four Corners report but it is not the only state doing the wrong thing.
“It’s critical for the federal government to put in a judicial inquiry so people can have confidence that what will come out of it will solve the problem.
“The review they’ve announced will not solve the problem.”
Not only would a Royal Commission give people an opportunity to provide information about their water problems, Mr Peters said it would help shut down the negative public opinion about farmers, particularly cotton irrigators, that has surfaced since the airing of the Four Corners program.
“My concern is that all farmers reputations are being smeared because of the inappropriate behaviour by a small minority,” he said.
“We’re all getting tainted with the same brush.
“In my role as head of NSW Farmers I spent many years trying to enhance the reputation of farmers and this just ruins that work.”
Talk of scrapping the $13 billion Basin Plan has been rife since Four Corners aired its controversial report, which included leaked recordings of NSW’s top water bureaucrat, Gavin Hanlon, apparently discussing a possible plan to withdraw NSW from the project.
MDBA chief executive Phillip Glyde has dismissed these claims, saying the MDBA is committed to delivering the Basin Plan “on time and in full”.
Mr Peters said while there are parts of the plan “that are not working”, he doesn’t think starting again is the answer.
“I think it’d be very unwise to not proceed with the plan,” he said.
“I’ve been through two previous water reform processes that the federal government has undertaken and had extensive involvement in the third water reform; it was very stressful on the community. People are over it.”
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