Death by a thousand cuts
The (mis)management of the nations water resources is out of control. In the Nationals media release below, we learn how the Broken River irrigators will have no option left but to sell their water rights to the Government.
We see the loss of water to this district -plus- the loss of water from the Goulburn River system through the north south pipeline -plus- the lifting of the trading cap by the Victorian Government -plus- the continued uncontrolled stripping of the darling system in Queensland -plus- the continuing squabbling amongst the various authorities.
All of these actions place the future of our food-bowl production in jeopardy and nobody seems to notice, or care, that these water transfers will permanentlt alter micro climates everywhere because water falling in rain on one area is being evaporated hundreds of kilometres away in another region. That means regions downstream of the water transfer will not get the annual rainfall that history shows in the past. That is man-made climate change vandalism by Governments that could/should be avoided.
“Death by a thousand” cuts is the sentence handed out to Broken Valley irrigators by Tim Holding, Minister for Water according to Nationals Member for Benalla, Bill Sykes.
Dr Sykes said, “Tim Holding has made a callous and calculated decision to close down the Broken Valley irrigation system without any regard to the social and economic impact on affected irrigators and surrounding communities.
“Holding’s decision to walk away at the eleventh hour from irrigators’ proposals for a targeted water buy back scheme and to proceed with a non targeted scheme means certain death for irrigation in the Broken Valley downstream of Lake Mokoan after it is decommissioned.
“The non targeted approach will result in ongoing problems with reliability of supply and inability to deliver water within four days of ordering.
“There will also be massive increases in water costs as a smaller number of irrigators meet the cost of maintaining the whole irrigation system.
“Water losses due to distribution inefficiencies will become an even bigger issue.
“Farming in the system will simply become unviable and irrigators will have no option but to sell their water.”
“The Broken Valley irrigation system will close down over the next ten years and we will lose more of our young families from the area. It will be “death by a thousand cuts”.
Dr Sykes continued, “What is most galling about this whole sordid affair is the way Mr Holding has engaged the irrigators in protracted negotiations to buy time.
“Irrigators participated in good faith attempting to achieve a win win outcome for irrigation farming and the environment. But all along Mr Holding was simply buying time until a deal was done with the Rudd Government to exclude Government water buy backs from the 4 per cent cap on water trading and to access more Federal money to purchase water.”
Dr Sykes concluded, “This callous, calculated action by Mr Holding should leave people in no doubt about what lengths he and John Brumby are prepared to go to achieve their political objectives.
“As Mark Twain said, ‘Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over’.
“You can expect to see a lot more fighting as irrigators and associated communities realise the impact of the Brumby Government’s decisions on their futures.”
