Labor and the Greens recently passed a bill that bought back another 450 Gigalitres out of the Murray Darling Basin.
This brings the total amount of water bought back by the Commonwealth to approximately 2,500 Gigalitres.
This is about the same amount of water that is diverted by the Snowy Hydro Scheme. In other words the Snowy Hydro just diverts water to run out to sea in South Australia instead of Victoria. It may as well have never been built.
The water bought back by the Commonwealth is used for “environmental flows.” This means that parts of the Murray river floods every 7 to 8 years out of ten instead of a couple times a decade. This overwatering causes erosion of the river banks and rotting of the trees.
Not only that, water taken from farmers runs all the way down to the lower lakes in South Australia only to evaporate in what are very shallow lakes. It is estimated that around 850 Gigalitres evaporate every year.
These lakes used to be estuarine I.e. seawater but barrages have stopped the seawater from getting in. This has destroyed what used to be a very productive fishing industry.
Destroying our irrigation sector is just another way Labor and the Greens are destroying Australia’s productive capacity and the jobs that come with it.
