Stakeholders from around the basin, including northern Victoria, attended the two-day Basin Leadership Summit to present differing perspectives on how the basin plan was unfolding.
VFF water council chairman Andrew Leahy said he regarded it as an opportunity to highlight the VFF’s concerns that farmers, rural communities and agriculture had been ignored in the MDBA’s discussion paper.
“Andrew McConville, MDBA CEO, acknowledged the MDBA should have provided greater discussion in the paper on impacted communities,” he said.
“The VFF is preparing its submission at the moment, as well as a template submission that will be available soon on its website for everyone to download and complete their own submission.”
City of Greater Shepparton Deputy Mayor Geoff Akers said there was a large cross section invited by the MDBA.
“It will be important that those with a lived experience in the basin are heard rather than those living outside the basin,” he said
“We need to ensure those impacted by the basin plan prepare submissions.”
Bamawm dairy farmer Anne Gardiner said one goal of the conference was to bring together stakeholders with different perspectives but she was not convinced that some environmentalists would listen to a view other than their own.
“There is always going to have to be a balance,” she said
She said the advent of climate change meant that it may not be possible to achieve some goals originally set down for the Murray-Darling, and other constraints may not allow more water to be pushed down some rivers, such as the Goulburn, without damaging the environment.
She echoed remarks made by other conference participants that just adding more water would not necessarily achieve the right outcomes.
MDBA chief executive Andrew McConville said the conference achieved exactly what it set out to do.
“The summit was designed to bring people together to create some colliding perspectives and spark new ideas,” he said.
Some took the “colliding” to heart, and although the debates were generally respectful, in one instance an environmentalist tried to talk over the top of a Riverina irrigator.
The room was not impressed.
Mr McConville said this year’s summit focused on supporting basin leaders to engage confidently and constructively with their communities to ensure that a diversity of perspectives and lived experiences were represented in discussions about the basin’s future.
“If we can facilitate a process like this, we get people to understand that holding tension and feeling uncomfortable is okay, because ultimately you will get a better breakthrough,” he said.
Key themes to emerge over the two-day event included the importance of recognising the contribution of all groups to the basin and the need for everyone to compromise to achieve a shared goal of healthy rivers and waterways.
National Irrigators Council chief executive Zara Lowien this was a once-in-a-decade chance to have feedback on how governments might make decisions that will affect the community.
“So you need to get involved, you might not understand it all but even just sending in a message about how having a strong, vibrant economy is important to you, that is critical for the MDBA to understand,” she said.
Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder Simon Banks said he had a strong interest in how to get the best out of the Commonwealth’s environmental water, so having conversations about that had been really good to get different perspectives from different members of the community.
