Irrigators meet with NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson.
The financial and social deterioration that joining the National Water Agreement, with its removal of more irrigation water, will cause people in The Riverina is explained to NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson.
The deterioration caused by irrigation water removal has been explained to every State and Federal Water minister since the legislation of the Water Act 2007; yet the removal continues. Further, the claimed environmental needs for this removal have been exposed as absurd, and debunked by irrigator and country representatives, and scientists such Professors Jennifer Marohasy and Peter Gell.
History shows that politicians do not make decisions based on facts, at least not on the facts that they claim to.
Politicians and their parties make decisions based primarily on the facts that will get them re-elected.
The electoral facts are that over three quarters of the NSW population and politicians live in the urban areas of Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong. The prosperity of the irrigation industry has very little effect on this population. Within this population is a very large sub-population that is ideologically opposed to removing any water from rivers at all. This ideology if displayed by people who vote for political parties such as The Greens and Sustainable Australia Party. There is very little electoral benefit for politicians in the urban areas for supporting the irrigation industry. Conversely, there is a great political benefit in supporting so called environmental causes and suppressing the irrigation industry.
A secondary consideration is what will advance the politician’s political career. Ambitious State politicians want to advance to Federal politics, and so will act in the manner that will achieve this. A State politician of any Party will not contradict his or her Party Federally. In the examples of NSW Labor Water Minister Rose Jackson and Premier Chris Minns, neither of these will contradict Federal Labor Minister Tanya Plibersek and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The same subservience exists in the Liberal/National Party Coalition.
The political facts ensure that the States of NSW and Victoria will join the Federal National Water Agreement, and the people in The Riverina will suffer for it.
These political facts cannot be surmounted in NSW or Victoria, regardless of who the people in The Riverina elect to State or Federal Parliament. History has also shown that it doesn’t matter what the people in the irrigation areas say or do, the suppression of this industry, and the consequent deterioration of the prosperity of all the people in these areas, continues.
The only solution to this deterioration is to separate politically from NSW, and from Victoria, and form a Riverina State. The rivers containing this water are in this proposed State, and will be under its authority as described in Section 100 of the Australian Constitution. This State will decide how water is managed, and it is certain that the irrigation industry, and the consequent prosperity of its people, will be supported and ensured.
David Landini
Australian Constitution: Section 100: ‘The Commonwealth shall not, by any law or regulation of trade or commerce, abridge the right of a State or of the residents therein to the reasonable use of the waters of rivers for conservation or irrigation.’
