Independent Member for Murray Helen Dalton has called the Minns Government’s bluff on the socio economic impacts of buying back 450GL of water from Southern Basin irrigation communities.
In question time on Thursday, the Member for Murray asked Premier Chris Minns to fiscally account for the damage buying back 450GL will actually cost our state’s economy.
“Economists and industry professionals from New South Wales’ dairy and rice industries estimate the federal government’s 450 gigalitre buyback of Murray-Darling water will cost our state’s economy a staggering $20 billion dollars a year,” Mrs Dalton informed the Parliament.
She then continued to drill down on the Premier’s knowledge on the socio economic impacts on rural and remote irrigation communities.
“That’s just two ag commodities. Every dollar circulated in rural communities has a multiplier of seven,” she said.
“Has your Treasury bothered to conduct similar modelling for all agricultural commodities, and if not, why not?”
In response the Premier referred to an AITHER report (an advisory company) that was a desktop study of work that has already been done with no updated information.
Mrs Dalton said she was not satified with the responses.
“The Premier has misled Parliament and the people of New South Wales by using irrelevant sources to try and justify his governments reasoning,” she said.
“He’s so clueless when it comes to the devastating impacts buybacks will have that he will refer to anything his staff hand him to read and hope it’s true.
“The Premier and his Water Minister Rose Jackson need to listen to people who do know what they’re talking about and consider the localised productivity losses that are not reflected in the report the Premier referred to.
“That report is a flawed calculation and does not take into account the legacy impact on families, communities, businesses and our overall economy.”