Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Rochester irrigators, who are along the Campaspe River in northern Victoria, suffered from shocking drought impacts and had no water allocation for about four years. So, with great sadness and heavy hearts, some 90 per cent of them very recently—a few months back—decided to sell all of their water via the Victorian government to the environment, to the Commonwealth’s environment trust. So they have virtually no water at all, just a few megalitres each of stock and domestic water, which is for flushing their toilets, washing their clothes, keeping their garden alive and keeping their livestock alive.

Can you imagine their amazement when they read the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s guide, which said they should now be targeted to give up another 45 per cent of their water? This is extraordinary. Is it that the authority does not actually know what is going on—who has already sold their water to the environment—or do they want to claw back, to just one megalitre or no megalitres for those families who totally depend on that last bit of stock and domestic water to be able, literally, to live in this part of Australia. I think it is extraordinary. I suppose it is no more extraordinary than a lot of the other flaws and distressing inaccuracies in the Murray-Darling Basin Authority guide. Will the minister please make sure that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority gets its act together now and restores some confidence across the basin, because too many people are now putting their hands up in the air and saying, ‘It is all too hard.’