THE message from national irrigator groups to a Senate inquiry this week was that it needed to stop water buybacks.
But on the ground, irrigators have voted with their feet – and wallets – to embrace the pouring of government money into liquid assets.
From Yarrawonga to Deniliquin, Moulamein and Koraleigh in NSW, irrigators are making the choice to get rid of permanent water entitlements.
The Poon Boon Stock and Domestic Trust was wound up last year, after its nine beneficiaries – based near Koraleigh, north-west of Swan Hill – received unspecified payments "in the millions" combined to sell their 13,000 megalitres of unregulated water entitlements.
And after the years of drought, it was not a hard decision, landholder Dallas Pearce said.
"After looking at the bottom of the lakes being dry for nine years, I don't think there would be too many regretting it," he said.
As one local said, the irrigators were "getting money for water they didn't have".
While the average price paid under the Federal Government's Restoring the Balance program for NSW Murray general security (below Barmah choke) entitlements has been $1107, Mr Pearce said the irrigators' unregulated water did not attract the same sort of price.
In nine years of drought, the local lakes system had only one partial filling, in stark contrast to their historical reliability, he said.
"Poon Boon Station was the biggest (local) station, in control of the water," he said.
"They had the settlement on Poon Boon Lake as the lake was more reliable than the (Murray) River."
The water returned by the irrigators is in addition to more than 256,000ML of secured Federal Government water purchases in the NSW Murray River Catchment area.
The Federal Government has set aside $3.1 billion for water purchases under its Restoring the Balance to the Murray-Darling Basin program, but after the Windsor inquiry into the Guide to the Basin Plan, in November 2011 it ceased general tenders until at least next year.
The focus instead has been on targeted purchases.
For the government, the irrigator response to the program has been a success, with a total of 1330 gigalitres in secured entitlements purchased to the end of September.
But with regional leaders saying there was no place for further irrigation water to leave the area, and the Victorian Government opposed to any further non-strategic federal buybacks, what does a farmer selling their water actually lose?
*Full story in this week's Stock & Land
