Release: Flush the MDBA out of NSW

Release: Flush the MDBA out of NSW

The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, the nation’s largest grassroots advocacy group representing taxpayers, today calls for the NSW government to take Deputy Premier John Barilaro’s recommendation on the Murray Darling Basin Plan and ‘rip the bloody thing up.’

“When government gets into the business of business, people suffer. The Murray Darling Basin Plan inserts the government into the water trading market. But rather than operating like the farmers sending the water where it is most needed, the Murray Darling Basin Authority wastes 70 percent of the water on unnecessary environmental projects.”

“Mr. Barolaro said it well when he encouraged the NSW government to put people before the environment. But in the case of the MDBA, they aren’t even helping the environment. The Authority has caused problematic floods, with water farmers desperately need.”

“Most of us know that if you over-water a succulent, it dies. But the MDBA fails to understand the same goes for the bush,” says ATA Communications Manager, Emilie Dye. “The Murray Darling Basin Plan has disrupted both the water economy and the natural ecosystem.”

“The MDBA cost taxpayers $13 billion to fund. Now ScoMo and the states are coughing up billions in handouts to help suffering farmers survive. NSW has been forced to cart water to dried up towns at great expense to the taxpayer. The cost to the agricultural industry is astronomical, but the solution is simple. Cut all funding to the MDBA and give water rights back to the states and to the farmers.”

“Few people understand the land as well as the farmers who have scratched out a living in the dirt for generations. NSW pollies would be wise to take water out of the hands of MDBA bureaucrats and give it back to the experts.”