TFGA calls for water policy reform.

Mr Skillern said with the current dry season set to continue into 2016, water policy and management would be one of the key issues.

“The current model needs reforming – under the current model, you have four entities in one shape or another, managing water in Tasmania – that’s a complex system, and in any complex system you will find there are disputes and it tends to break down; this is no different,” Mr Skillern said.

The four major players were TasWater, Tasmanian Irrigation, Hydro Tasmania and the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and the Environment (DPIPWE).

“Of course, agendas are not neccesarily compatible with each other,” Mr Skillern said.

He said the TFGA wanted to sit down with stakeholders and the water providers to ensure irrigation water use was designed to maximise productivity and efficiency.

“Discussions need to start at the point where we identify what we want to achieve from our water resources and how we will achieve that outcome,” he said. The early introduction of “cease-to-take” notices on some of the state’s main rivers underscored the point water management was a complex area and the state needed to come up with a better model, he said.

”Water management is not directly related to this particular season, what this season does is focus the structural flaws within the current management system.”

The TFGA would also like the government to look at its Agrivision 2050 plan, he said.

“We need to be sitting down and mapping out the road to achieve that – if we don’t do that, we are not serious about a genuine objective,” Mr Skillern said. “Unless you have substance and foundation under it, it becomes rhetoric.  We need to set a benchmark and have an industry led discussion, as to where we want it to be and what the touchstones, along the way, are going to look like.”