Along with many other NSW and Victorian regional communities, we are increasingly concerned to be informed that the extra 450,000 megalitres of ‘upwater’ for the environment, is somehow becoming inevitable.

This volume equates to about half of Burrinjuck Dam.

We have always been led to believe that the extra 450 GL of ‘upwater’ could only be taken if there was, at the very least, a zero or neutral socio-economic impact.

We were told by state government and representative organisations that it’s impossible and therefore it would never happen.

In simple terms, that 450GL number was all about a political ‘trade off’ to get South Australia to sign up to the Murray Darling Basin Plan and had nothing at all to do with ‘best available science’ or deliverable outcomes.

If further water efficiencies cannot be found, non-strategic buy backs will be back on the table and so called “willing” water sellers will have to be found.

We are now being told by the senior staff at the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) and others, that a “willing seller” (an irrigator who sells water to the government) is defined as a neutral or positive socio-economic impact.

This is a massive threat to our regions our communities and our iconic industries such as the rice industry.

We all know that non-strategic, haphazard purchases by government bodies have the potential to create significant socio-economic upheaval to regions like ours.

The entire southern connected system has already suffered much pain and again we are going to be expected to do more.

Another 450GL of non-strategic government purchasing is absolutely unacceptable and so are the flaky, unrealistic definitions that accompany this piece of the legislation.

Results or outcomes are what’s important to us, not politically inspired, volumetric logarithms.

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Our vibrant and productive NSW and Victorian regional communities throughout the MDB do not deserve to be politically traded off to South Australia or to be left highly vulnerable to poorly constructed and rushed legislation.

The way the SA government has been behaving recently it’s becoming very clear that they will never be satisfied, not ever.