Concerns consultation on the new Murray-Darling Basin Water infrastructure program will simply 'tick the boxes.'

Community meetings on the Murray-Darling Basin Water Infrastructure program socio-economic test went out last week, with consultations starting this week.

The program will be used to decide on projects, to be developed to recover an additional 450gigalitres of water.

Seftons are running the consultation process. 

Speak Up chair Shelley Scoullar said there was extreme community frustration at the lack of notification and planning for the meetings, which started in Mildura on Monday.

 “The Commonwealth Government has known about this since June, and the way it is being organised shows it is nothing more than an 11th-hour tick the box ‘consultation’,” Ms Scoullar said.

“How can our Federal Government be so disorganised that notification of meetings  go out less than a week before the consultation period begins?”

In June the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council agreed to develop additional socioeconomic ‘neutrality’ criteria by the end of 2018, to apply to programs and proposals to recover another 450 GL of water under the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

“The whole point of broadening the socio-economic criteria was to pick up the wider impacts to communities due to the recovery of an additional 450GL,” Ms Scoullar said.

“Coming out of the last MinCo (Water Ministers) meeting we were certainly under the impression that on-farm efficiencies for Victoria and NSW were off the table, productive water was safe and the Commonwealth was looking for urban and industry water to make up the gaps,” Ms Scoullar said.

“From the brief look I have had the additional criteria they still only focus on individual participation and not the broader impacts and or the market impacts through the reduction to the productive pool.

She commended the NSW and Victorian governments for their much broader criteria

But she said she was concerned  the Commonwealth’s additional criteria failed to protect communities from on-farm projects outside their valley.

“For example, there is nothing currently in place to prevent farmers in South Australia from participating in a project in SA and then replacing the entitlements they returned to the Commonwealth from the upstream communities,” Ms Scoullar said.

“This has the potential for further significant detrimental economic impact in regions like the NSW Murray. We know that this has already happened, in the Murray, Victorian and Goulburn systems.

She said third party impacts on trying to deliver this additional 450GL had not been considered.

“This whole process seems like a set up to achieve political gain, again at the expense of our communities,” Ms Scoullar said.

“Giving people less than a week’s notice is totally unacceptable. Those who managed to get their hands on some water will be flat out with hay or preparing for harvest. Those who have a small amount of water for summer cropping will be preparing for that.”

VFF Water Council chairman Richard Anderson was also critical of the notice period. 

“Informing a key stakeholder with less than a week’s notice is far from meaningful consultation,” Mr Anderson said.

“We believe any socio-economic criteria must apply to all water recovery projects, not just on-farm projects.

 “The evidence is in – previous on-farm projects, in which farmers had to return water to the Commonwealth to receive funding for on-farm upgrades, hurt regional communities.”

A spokesman for the Federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources said the government was committed to running a meaningful consultation process, that provided local communities with direct opportunities to help shape the additional social and economic criteria for on-farm water recovery projects.

The spokesman said there had been strong calls from the community for government to commence the consultation, as a matter of urgency.

“Basin ministers asked for this work to be done and provided for their consideration, at the next Ministerial Council meeting, to be held later this year,” the spokesman said.

“The department is committed to meeting that deadline.”

He said there were plenty of opportunities for every stakeholder to get involved in the consultation, including in person at 14 town meetings, over the next three weeks.

An online survey closes on November 9.