Poorly Researched and Misinforming Item on the ABC news
August 16, 2011
On ABCs 7pm TV news on the 25th July an item appeared that commented on a recently released report by Environment Victoria which claims, despite all the evidence to the contrary that a further reduction of irrigation water available for food production will not have any adverse effect on productivity.
Called “Oversubscribed” the report argued that because farmers were offering their water for sale to the Commonwealth Government who would then use it for environmental purposes, and they were remaining in the farming business, then these farmers must not expect to see this water sale to have any impact on their neighbour’s or their farm productivity.
A number of things are concerning about this reporting.
Whoever investigated the piece did not report the fact (1.) that you stay in farming after you have sold your water because it is virtually impossible to sell your comparatively small block of land in an irrigation areas once it has no water. Its value is wiped out.
Fact 2. Overwhelmingly consistent evidence was taken on this issue of water sales to the government by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia (chaired by Tony Windsor) and published in its report “Of drought and flooding Rains: Inquiry into the impact of the Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan”, May 2011. It found that the Irrigation Water Authorities and Shire Councils up and down the Murray Darling Basin as well as food manufacturers, especially dairy factories and private farmers all reported the problem of “stranded assets” when farmers sold their water out of the irrigation system to be quarantined for future environmental flow .
The Report : “Changing Land Use in the GMID 2006-2010 :Where have all the dairy farms gone” , produced by the Victorian Dept of Primary Industries and NVIRP published in July 2010 found : “60% of irrigated fodder production/cropping blocks in the GMID were dried off and were not planned to be irrigated in the 2009/10 season. 45% of land available for irrigation within the GMID is now severely underutilised and generating very little in the way of agricultural production” p6. This is the land where all or some of the irrigation water has now been sold off. To say that this has had no impact is absurd.
They reported that stranded assets or the “Swiss Cheese” effect makes irrigation systems less cost effective and less efficient. In the Goulburn Murray system where some half of the dairy farms were forced to sell all or some of their water during the drought , one dairy factory closed, at Leitchville, and there was substantial reduction of over 25% of milk supplied to the other manufacturers. There are now over 70 shops vacant in Shepparton, in the heart of the irrigation food bowl of Northern Victoria. We have the biggest proportion of welfare recipients of any equivalent community, apparently.
Fact 3. As the H of Reps Standing Committee on Regional Australia found, the sellers of their water to the Government are not “willing sellers” but sellers under pressure from their mostly bank lenders. When your debts have doubled during the 7 years of drought and your water is worth as much as your water and land together, but you can readily sell your water, then the banks insist that you enter the water market. Again there is documented evidence from rural counsellors and the sellers themselves who describe these on-going pressures.
Fact 4. The Victorian Government has itself complained about the seriously negative impacts of the Federal Government continuing to put non-strategic tenders into the water market place given it has invested most of some $1billion in trying to modernise the Goulburn Murray Irrigation System. All of this work is undone when a farmer is forced to sell his water off a recently improved part of the system, rendering it once again inefficient.
To try to stop this accumulating negative effect, GMID no longer allows irrigators to sell any amount of their water off farms along the main channels. Only those on the spurs, or minor channels are allowed to offer water up to the Government, where it will be taken out of the irrigation pool for ever.
Fact 5. The only farmer interviewed for the news item, and who was strongly supportive of the ridiculous notion that selling water off you farm is always done willingly and has no negative impact, was described simply as an “irrigator.”
This “farmer” Mr Ian Christoe is a member of the Greens and stood as the Greens Party Candidate in the last two Federal Elections for Murray and in the Local City of Greater Shepparton Election. He is totally committed to the Greens policies of contraction of irrigated agriculture, and so is hardly an unaligned commentator on Environment Victoria’s dangerously inaccurate report. A one minute Google search would have given the ABC the facts about Mr Ian Christoe’s very dedicated political allegiance. While this allegiance should not rule out his right to comment, it should have been stated to the audience.
This ABC news item seriously distressed local farm communities with its inaccuracies and implications. They are fearful that it is a forerunner for what may be revealed in the MDBA’s next exposure draft of the MDBasin sustainable diversions limit proposal, due to be released at the end of July,
Please help me to clarify what was a poorly researched and misinforming item on the ABC news,
Yours faithfully,
(Dr) Sharman Stone,
Federal Member for Murray.
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