The government will announce today a new round of Murray-Darling water licence buybacks in regions facing some of the biggest cuts to water rights under plans to save the river.
In the latest part of its $3.1 billion basin buyback program, the government will put a further $300 million on the table for farmers willing to sell their water to ensure a greater share for the environment.
The buybacks will also count towards cuts to farmer’s water allocations proposed by the independent Murray-Darling Basin Authority of between 27 and 37 per cent across the basin.
The government has pledged to meet cuts to water extraction through buybacks and water saving infrastructure.
In the latest round of buybacks, $200 million will be committed to the ”southern basin” which includes the Murrumbidgee in NSW, Goulburn, Loddon, and Campaspe in Victoria and the Murray across three states. There will also be $100 million for the Lower Balonne region in Queensland, home of the giant cotton farm Cubbie Station, which can store the same amount of water as Sydney Harbour.
In June, the administrators of Cubbie, McGrathNicol, offered to sell the government 25 per cent of the farm’s water entitlements through an earlier round of buybacks in the Lower Balonne, which was ultimately rejected by the government.
Representatives of Cubbie Station did not respond to the Herald last night about whether they would consider making another submission to the application process.
The Water Minister, Tony Burke, said water buybacks in combination with water saving infrastructure could create ”a basin plan that restores the river to health, supports strong regional communities and ensures the importance of food production”. ”Water purchases through this round will be counted as part of the final sustainable diversion limits [water cuts] in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan,” he said.
But the opposition Murray-Darling spokesman, Simon Birmingham, said there was a lack of strategy on how and where the government was conducting buybacks. He said better co-ordination with the authority’s plans was needed.
Senator Birmingham said the government continued to overspend every year on water buybacks but underspend on water infrastructure projects.
The government has so far purchased 930 billion litres of water entitlements, delivering an average 650 billion litres of water a year to the environment.
