The Goulburn Murray Irrigation District (GMID) Water Leadership Forum, today released the final report on the GMID socio-economic impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
The report reinforces the socio-economic impacts on the dairy industry, specifically the negative impacts of recovering the 450GL ‘upwater’ and the importance of delivering the full 650 GL in environmental offsets.
Chair of the Australian Dairy Industry Council (ADIC) Water Taskforce, Daryl Hoey said the report highlighted the negative impacts on economic and social indicators resulting from the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
“The GMID community will be poorer again if any more water is recovered from irrigators, whether through buybacks or on-farm upgrades requiring farmers to transfer entitlement to the environment.
Milk production is down by 26 per cent in the GMID region which is directly linked to less water available under the basin plan.
Dairy resilience will wear thinner and two or more years of insecure water deliveries will drive more dairy farms out of business”, said Mr Hoey.
ADF agrees that the government needs to redirect the $1.5 billion earmarked for the Commonwealth On-Farm Further Irrigation Efficiency (COFFIE) program into works and measures to achieve similar or better environmental outcomes, and farm upgrade incentives so water saving remains on-farm.
“What we would like to see is the development for a regional economic development plan to attract new dairy investment to the GMID and retain the HRWS in the region”, said Mr Hoey.
The summit brought together community, industry and government representative concerned about dry conditions, low water allocations, rising water prices, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan’s socio- economic effects, and the GMID’s long-term viability. A working group was formed and commissioned RMCG to prepare this socio-economic impact assessment.
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