The Nationals’ Member for Mildura, Jade Benham, has criticised Water Minister Gayle Tierney’s refusal to consider a practical solution to help reduce rising irrigation water prices.
Ms Benham challenged the Minister over looming water shortfalls and their impact on irrigation costs for local food producers, calling for urgent action to provide relief to struggling farmers.
“In times of hardship, we need to be using every lever we can to support our food producers, not tying ourselves in bureaucratic knots,” Ms Benham said.
During the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) Budget Inquiry this week Ms Benham proposed a simple and immediate solution: request the Environmental Water Holder consider using its capacity to trade carryover environmental water so it can be temporarily accessed by irrigators to help ease pressure on water markets and bring down prices for them.
“The Minister acknowledged environmental water is carried over every year, even when there is an abundance. This water could be redirected, just for the short term, to help farmers doing it tough. But instead of showing leadership, she refused to even entertain the idea,” Ms Benham said.
“The Minister’s response that ‘the Act is the Act’ is an unacceptable excuse. We are not asking for new laws here; we are simply asking the government to take positive steps to help make all that surplus water available where it is urgently needed now.
“The government has the power to work with existing legislation, especially in the face of drought and skyrocketing water prices, to help people, and help them now,” she said.
“It’s not about the politics. It’s about keeping farmers on their land and food on our tables.”
Ms Benham said the refusal to consider this proposal was particularly disappointing given the mounting cost-of-living pressures regional communities already face.
“Our permanent plantings, our food security, and our farmers’ livelihoods are all under threat,” she said. “I offered a constructive, common-sense solution, and the Minister chose to hide behind bureaucracy instead of delivering for the regions.
“Labor can’t manage water, and regional Victorians are paying the price.”
