2017-12-11
The Australian Greens will move to disallow the Government’s plan to strip the southern Murray Darling Basin of 605GL of environmental water once Parliament resumes next year.
“The Murray Darling Basin Authority hoped no-one would notice when they released a statement late on Friday afternoon saying they’d seek to strip 605GL of water allocation to the southern basin, but in South Australia we are watching," Greens Murray Darling Basin spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.
“This is an admission that the 605GL of allocated water hasn’t been going to the environment, which shows there are fundamental flaws in the management of the Murray Darling Basin Plan. We need more water, not less for the health of the river in South Australia, and if the MDBA can’t figure out where this 605GL has gone, they need to find it, not just strike it out from the plan. We’ve been promised that the Murray Darling Basin Plan would be delivered in full and this latest scandal calls to question the integrity and independence of the Murray Darling Basin Authority.
“This move would further undermines the Murray Darling Basin Plan, the years of work that went into developing it, and the billions of taxpayers’ money that has been spent, and cannot go ahead.
“I will be writing to the Senate crossbench and Labor asking them to support my disallowance of the Government’s regulation to take an outrageous amount of environmental water from the basin in an act of legalised theft.
“Special treatment for a greedy corporate irrigators must stop if the river and the communities that rely on it are to survive. This river feeds and waters our nation and is in crisis. The Government must clean up its act and restore faith in the Murray Darling Basin Plan before it is too late.”