It’s not just the regions’ irrigating farmers who are up in arms over the South Australian Royal Commission on the Murray Darling Basin Plan report.
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Member for Farrer Sussan Ley, Member for Murray Austin Evans, Griffith mayor John Dal Broi and Griffith business chamber vice president Paul Pierotti are all outraged by the report and its recommendations.
They unanimously agree the report favours South Australian interests and overlooks the “pain” felt in the Murray and Murrumbidgee areas.
In particular, comments made by commissioner Bret Walker SC in relation to what he called the “greatly overstated” negative impacts caused by water buybacks in regional and rural communities in the basin area.
Ms Ley said this “demonstrates incredible bias and a subjective lack of understanding.”
“Never forget, this commission of inquiry was created by the previous South Australian Labor Government as a political exercise, and the outcome leaves me even more convinced this is all it was ever intended to be,” Ms Ley said.
She details numerous studies showing the enormous economic hit the area has taken by removing 20 per cent of productive water.
“To suggest even more [water] needs to removed, and in vast amounts, is not only misguided but physically impossible to deliver through the river systems and channel constraints.”
Mr Evans seconded these sentiments, calling the report a “new gold standard in confirmation bias.”
He says he will “never” support or vote for a bill that takes more water away from the region.
Cr Dal Broi said what he had seen of the report was “bunkum” and said he had severe concerns for the family farmers and the “little guys” who have made the region the food bowl it is today.
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“All of our towns have suffered retractions as a result of the buybacks,” Cr Dal Broi said.
“So my answer to those comments is to call them absolute bunkum.”
For some like Mr Pierotti, their demands for a Federal Royal Commission into the MDBA have now intensified.
"We've been calling for a federal royal commission for a long time, we believe it is overdue — the fish kills, the lack of water to communities," Mr Pierotti said.
However Ms Ley believes the results from another commission would only help to create further uncertainty, right throughout regional Australia.
“Every state should support an independent audit which assesses whether the water rules we have right now are allowing the balance needed for the Plan to succeed,” Ms Ley said.
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