Along the Victorian Murray, irrigation water means jobs, farm confidence, food production and the future of our towns.

That is why Labor’s unnecessary additional water buybacks since 2022 add insult to the injury of their 2008-2013 round of buybacks.  

The Nationals in the former Coalition Government worked to protect Basin communities from Labor’s buyback devastation by establishing a socio-economic test so water buybacks did not simply hollow out irrigation districts. The Albanese Labor Government broke that bipartisanship, teamed up with the Greens, scrapped buyback protections, put a 450 gigalitre political buyback target ahead of regional people and pretended it cared through transitional ‘Sustainable Communities Program’ funding for buyback-ravaged irrigation communities. More on that in a moment.

Labor’s round 1 of 2008-13 buybacks ripped 786 Gigalitres (GL) – that’s 786,000 million litres – from Victoria’s irrigation communities.   Labor are going for the knockout in round 2 since 2022, pursuing 137 GL from Victoria toward their 450GL target.  Since 2008, Victoria has surrendered around 45 per cent of water in the Basin, despite our historical use being around one-third of total Basin water use.

Federal farm reporting agency ABARES has already warned that pursuing a 225GL buyback scenario in the southern Basin – the Murray - would cut average water use by 133GL a year, increase water allocation prices by about $45 per megalitre and reduce the value of irrigated production by $111 million a year. ABARES projected that Northern Victoria would suffer the largest average reduction in water use under Labor’s 450 GL recovery plans.

The Murray River Group of Councils – including Swan Hill and Gannawarra shires - has exposed Labor’s offensive “transition” funding, which includes $150 million earmarked for Victoria.  The Councils say buybacks have already reduced irrigation hectares by 51 per cent, cost nearly 2,000 jobs and up to $550 million in annual farm-gate losses. Yet Labor’s transitional funding support adds insult to injury as it vanishes into consultations, reports and bureaucracy – not real projects on the ground.

Swan Hill and our Murray towns deserve practical water infrastructure, real local investment and a Basin Plan that manages water — not a Labor-Greens water buyback crusade.