The deal was struck just two days before Labor’s Water Amendment (Restoring our Rivers) Bill was passed in the Federal Senate on Wednesday.
Under the government’s plan, the water bought from stressed farming families in NSW will be sent down to South Australia where she says it will be washed out into the Southern Ocean.
“This deal is an absolute betrayal of families and communities up and down the Murray-Darling Basin,” Mrs Dalton said.
“Make no mistake, we are going to lose regional communities throughout New South Wales because of Water Minister Tanya Plibersek’s disgraceful buyback plan.
“This simply cannot be allowed to happen. Premier Chris Minns must stand up for regional New South Wales and reject the Federal Government’s mad buyback plan once and for all.
“I understand Premier Minns was trying to work with Tanya. But now that Tanya has done a side deal with Sarah Hanson-Young, surely our Premier needs to accept that New South Wales has been played.”
“The only thing left for Premier Minns to do now is to say ‘No, you can’t transfer productive water out of New South Wales’.
“The Victorian Government has already ruled out buybacks in their State. Why hasn’t the New South Wales Government done the same?”
Mrs Dalton said NSW farming families deserve exactly the same protection that Victorian farming families already have.
“The Federal Government is falsely claiming this disastrous plan will save the basin, but that’s rubbish.
“This buyback plan will destroy the basin and anyone who says anything different is either ignorant or lying.
“Why would you spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars buying 450 gigalitres of productive water and then just flush it all out to sea.
“Tanya’s absurd plan is to turn productive water into wastewater.”
