The Murray Darling Basin

It's either a famine or a feast in this country. One minute there's no water and everyone is suffering from terrible droughts, then it pours and there's water everywhere and dams are full. The Murray Darling basin has been suffering for years from greed and lack of proper management and now it's time to fix it once and for all. It's a huge area, it covers parts of Queensland, NSW, ACT, Victoria and South Australia. As you can see, it runs through many states who are notorious for never being able to agree on anything. Most people don't know, or don't care, that it is by far the most important agricultural area in Australia.

Yesterday, Malcolm Holm, an irrigated dairy farmer from Finley in southern NSW said up to 1000 people crammed into a meeting with the Murray Darling Basin Authority officials who addressed the crowd and answered questions. It was packed out and several hundred people couldn't get in and had to mill about outside. He said it was a "shemozzle". Understandably, people are anxious and worried about their future.

It's going to be hard for Julia Gillard to fix the problems of the Murray Darling Basin. She made a deal with the Greens but she also promised to help regional areas and it's about to create a war between the Greenies and the farmers. Enough water must be returned to make the river sustainable environmentally to please the Greens and there's going to be economic hardship for irrigators and farmers which will hurt country areas.

The National Farmers Federation are up in arms saying that thousands of jobs will be lost, food prices will soar and are predicting death to country towns. On the other hand Green MP Sarah Hanson-Young says we need to fix it not just for ten years but for 100 years which makes total sense. But the scale of the water reductions is huge with the authority recommending 27 to 37 per cent reduction and this comes out at 40 to 45 per cent in some areas.

So what does the Coalition have to say about all this? Barnaby Joyce says "the whole fabric and social fabric of that community is decimated" and says that some regions "will have to be closed down". The authority is almost apologetic for its economic estimates saying the loss in agriculture will be $800 million a year which is about 13 per cent of current agriculture production but concedes that the short term could be greater.

I think this is such an important issue for all Australians but because most of us live in the cities, we either don't get to hear about it or we couldn't care less, but we should. What will happen if all this prime agricultural land is lost? Who is going to feed us, China? Just outside of Sydney there is a river called the Hawkesbury. A long time ago when the convicts arrived, it was discovered that the land around the river was rich and ideal for agriculture. Now in 2010, this land is being sliced up and sold off for housing. Yet another great hunk of soil perfect for crops goes to the real estate industry.

Serious negotiations need to take place between the states regarding what's to happen to the Murray Darling Basin and everyone knows they can't agree on anything. But a plan has to be agreed on for Bourke to act next year. Tony Abbott is expected to put pressure on the government by backing regional areas ahead of the rivers.