IRRIGATORS have dismissed last week's calls by Tony Abbott for a referendum on the Murray-Darling Basin, arguing that a change of management won't change the many problems facing it.
While the Federal Government currently has some control over the planning and caps being set in the Basin, State Governments still control much of the management of water despite a new era of reform on the table since 2007.
Keen to put some green credibility on the record, Mr Abbott announced that he would push for a referendum to have the Constitution altered so the Commonwealth controls the four-State catchment.
In a speech to the Sydney Institute last week, Mr Abbott said Australia’s biggest environmental problem was not climate change but "reconciling the human, economic and environmental demands on the Murray-Darling Basin".
"In paying so much more attention to climate change than to the Murray-Darling Basin, Mr Rudd has focused on problems that are other people’s responsibility as much as our own and on possible solutions that other countries must embrace as well as ourselves," Mr Abbott sais.
"The essential problem in the Murray-Darling Basin is that there’s rarely enough water to meet human needs, environmental flows and irrigation allocations. Water has been over-allocated because no state government has an equal responsibility to everyone with a stake in the system."
Mr Abbott said so far, the Rudd Government has spent almost a billion dollars on water buybacks "but a relative pittance on improved irrigation infrastructure" even though this could much more than pay for itself through the value of water saved.
"Prior to the last election Mr Rudd promised to spend $100 million to re-engineer Menindee Lakes and thus save 200 billion litres of water a year.
"Instead, the Prime Minister’s inaction means that the floodwaters about to fill this storage will be subject to the usual unnecessary losses through evaporation and leakage."
Mr Abbott said the overall management of the Murray-Darling Basin "is still bedevilled by the fact that no one is really in charge", promising the next Coalition federal government will upgrade infrastructure to minimise water wastage and will renew the invitation to the States to refer power over Murray-Darling water management to the Commonwealth.
"If the states prove unwilling by mid-2012 to refer to the Commonwealth such powers as are necessary to manage Murray-Darling water, a Coalition government elected this year will put the appropriate Constitutional change to the people at a referendum in conjunction with the 2013 election," he said.
But while tapping into a huge area of discontent in the bush, National Irrigators Council chief executive officer, Danny O'Brien, said irrigators would not support a full Commonwealth takeover.
Mr O'Brien said there was no evidence that "shifting management from one group of politicians and bureaucrats to another would improve the operation of the system".
"There seems to be some Canberra politicians under the misapprehension that they can make it rain whereas politicians in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide can’t," Mr O'Brien said.
"Because that is the real problem in the basin at the moment – 10 or more years of the worst drought in recorded history.
"No changes in management will address the fact that there has simply not been enough water to go around in recent years.
"Irrigators are already grappling with these changes and the myriad other reforms underway in water and they would not appreciate a change in direction – a direction that we thought had bipartisan support."
Minister for Water, Penny Wong, questioned why Mr Abbott would wait until 2013 for a referendum if the issue was so important.
"This is a recipe for inaction from a man who is frankly seeking to distract and disguise his views on climate change," Senator Wong said.
"Because the reality is the future of the Murray-Darling is threatened by climate change. And if you don’t deal with that reality, then you are not serious about the Murray-Darling."
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