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water buybacks

Recent fish deaths reignite management frustration – Part 2

For six generations, the Lunghusen family have farmed on Gunbower Creek. The recent fish deaths have Jason Lunghusen questioning the current management of the creek and how much say the community actually has in these top-down government-run projects.  

Water options offer hope for farmers: NSW Farmers Association

The state’s peak farming group says the NSW Alternatives to Buybacks Plan clearly puts the onus on the Albanese Government to avoid ruinous water buybacks. The scrapping of important legislative protections – designed to ensure towns and businesses would not be killed off as a result of buybacks under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan...

Water buyback framework fails

There is not much Wakool mixed farmer John Lolicato doesn’t know about water ... The recent release of the Restoring our Rivers draft framework has once again left him shaking his head ... John said this buyback is disastrous for the region environmentally, economically and socially.

Fact finding trip proves South Australia’s lower lakes are “fake lakes”

NSW farmers and politicians have been lied to about the state of South Australia’s Lower Lakes, with Independent Member for Murray, Helen Dalton, calling on NSW Premier Chris Minns to visit the area immediately. "We have all been conned and it must stop," Ms Dalton said.

Labor’s naïve support for mass buybacks sends government bureaucrats scrambling: Centofanti

The government agency tasked with looking after the interests of the state’s primary production has undertaken no modelling to understand the possible impact mass water buybacks will have on the South Australian agricultural production, it can be revealed … Dr Nicola Centofanti, said she is appalled with the Malinauskas Labor Government’s “talk first, think later” approach towards the River Murray.

The jury’s in: Fresh lakes a death sentence for Murray-Darling Basin

Goolwa South Australian resident, Ken Jury, sees a better way forward for the basin and believes that governments are risking the viability of the whole basin. Ken, an investigative journalist with a passion for marine and aquatic ecology ... is an expert on the South Australian Lower Lakes and Coorong ...

Community advocates tour with Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder

Currently, 4,622 gigalitres of entitlements is held by government as environmental water, and Australia’s largest irrigator, Dr Simon Banks, Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, was joined by Central Murray Environmental Floodplain Group, community representatives and Paul Madden OAM of Arbuthnot Sawmills for a tour of local farms and forests. John Toll farms at Gunbower ...

Leeton’s SunRice named top agricultural exporter

The SunRice group, with headquarters in Leeton, has won the Agribusiness, Food and Beverages Award at the 61st annual Australian Export Awards at Parliament House. The top prize was presented to CEO Paul Serra by the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade)… The decision by the Federal Government department to recognise SunRice came just days before the Federal Senate passed a controversial new bill giving the government increased powers to buy back water from irrigators.

The never never of live exports

Anyone tracking the media will see the Albanese government is in trouble, from the failed referendum through to promises to reduce power bills by $275 by 2025, to get wages growing faster than inflation and not to raid peoples super, it has a growing list of failed and broken promises ... You can see why the hard heads in government are quietly looking for a way to kick the live sheep trade issue down the road just as they have done with the Murray Darling promise.

Water Bill opens old wounds

Communities who carried the burden of a Basin Plan corrupted by politics are once again looking down the barrel of mass buybacks. The impacts of water buybacks cannot be understated as communities were ripped apart, football clubs closed, huge areas of food production and habitat provision were dried out, industries retracted, driving increased costs and undermining sustainability, and the price of water was sent out of reach of many young farmers.