Water (Rural and Agricultural) Policy Summary
Surviving drought, sustaining life
Inappropriate and inefficient water uses have placed huge demands on rivers and inland water systems. This has prolonged the severity of the current drought.
Current arrangements for water allocation have failed to secure a fair share of water that could have protected the health of the rivers and supplied smaller farms, towns and communities.
Some degree of global warming is now inevitable and droughts are likely to become even more intense and frequent if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed. The future stress on agricultural and rural water supply is going to be more extreme.
The NSW government’s priorities are wrong. People and the health of the rivers must be put ahead of the profits of agribusiness. The viability of smaller, low water intensity farms should not be sacrificed to prop up large irrigators. Crops such as cotton and rice are too water intensive
and unsuited to NSW’s dry and arid environment and should be phased out.
The Greens are committed to allocating water to the rivers, communities and smaller farms, phasing out unsustainable water uses and addressing dry land salinity and soil acidification. We believe that full public ownership of water and community involvement in decision making are the only way to secure sustainable food production and ensure the future of inland Australia.
The Greens will work towards:
- phasing out unsustainable water uses including flood irrigation;
- minimising irrigation dependency, and increased support for agriculture that is adapted to natural rainfall patterns;
- increased allocations of water to river flows;
- preventing the construction of new dams on waterways and phasing out transfers between catchments;
- placing protection of water resources ahead of extraction rights;
- water efficiency, re-use and recycling of water extracted from rivers and aquifers;
- water resources remaining in, and returning to, public ownership;
- consideration of Native Title in all current and future water determinations;
- implementing full resource cost recovery in water pricing; and
- legislative protection for all NSW wetlands to ensure sufficient surface and ground water.
