UPDATE:

NSW Minister for Lands and Water Kevin Anderson has now responded to the vote held in parliament in February, calling Mr Field's motion "a political stunt" and saying the licenses in the NSW Border Rivers and Gwydir Valleys were still valid.

"Floodplain harvesting licences for the NSW Border Rivers and Gwydir Valleys will come into effect on 1 July 2022, after the relevant water sharing plans have been amended," Minister Anderson said.

"Farmers and irrigators who hold licenses in these valleys are ready to comply and have been calling for certainty for years. The licences will provide certainty for water users and the environment."

"Despite a political stunt in the Legislative Council coordinated by Greens and former Greens, the NSW Floodplain Harvesting Policy is proceeding and the licenses already determined for the NSW Border Rivers and Gwydir Valleys remain valid."

Mr Anderson maintained the state government had consulted with professionals, scientists, industry and with local communities to ensure control on floodplain harvesting remained legally enforceable.

"Getting the balance right is important; we need healthy rivers, healthy farms and healthy communities and the governments policy achieves this balance," he said.

"Floodplain harvesting needs to be regulated. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it."

ORIGINAL STORY:

The Government has been stalled in introducing floodplain harvesting regulation for a third time, after a vote in the NSW Upper House last week disallowed further movement on the proposed Water Management (General) Amendment Regulation 2021.

The legislation would have introduced regulations on the practice of floodplain harvesting, as well as allowed the government to issue licences and entitlements for the controversial practice. 

The vote held in the NSW Legislative Council this week saw support towards NSW MP Justin Field’s disallowance motion with a result of 18 to 15, garnering support from the Labor opposition, The Greens, and Animal Justice Party. Calling the disallowance motion a ‘political game’, the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party abstained from voting. 

The motion follows the findings and recommendations of the recent floodplain harvesting inquiry that were handed down last month, of which there has been little time for the government to respond to. 

The Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party MLC and Deputy Chair of the Select Committee on Floodplain Harvesting Mark Banasiak said that the back and forth is delaying ‘good water policy’. 

“What is being attempted today puts good water policy at risk and obstructs the path forward to floodplain harvesting regulation,” said Mr Banasiak. 

“We stand for communities, the environment and farmers, and the only way to represent them moving forward is through appropriate floodplain harvesting regulation,” he said. 

While MP Cate Faehrmann is in agreement that regulations are both necessary and inevitable, her support of the disallowance was in opposition of what the proposed legislation would have allowed. 

“Floodplain harvesting needs to be licensed, but not to the extent that it’s been occurring over the past couple of decades, with massive amounts of over-extraction in the northern basin having disastrous consequences for downstream communities,” Ms Faehrmann said. 

While the current legal limit on floodplain harvesting is 64 Gigalitres, the new regulation could see licensing that allows harvesting beyond those limits. 

“The Government must bring floodplain harvesting to within the legal limits in the Murray-Darling basin plan. This is 64GL, not the 346GL that the Government has stated it publicly intends to,” Ms Faehrmann said. 

Ms Faehrmann also voiced concerns that issuing licences now could expose future governments to billions of dollars in compensation “when it inevitably needs to bring floodplain harvesting down to sustainable levels”.

NSW Irrigators’ Council CEO Claire Miller said that reform and regulation shouldn’t be delayed, even if it means that current irrigators using floodplain harvesting are required to decrease their intake. 

“It is unfathomable why anyone would want to further delay the regulation, licensing and metering of floodplain harvesting, and allow the current free-for-all to continue,” Ms Miller said. 

“We need to put the environment ahead of politics. This will be the largest transfer of water out of irrigation and to the environment in the northern Basin since the early 2000s, with about two Sydney Harbours going back to the environment,” Ms Miller said. 

Still, many stakeholders believe that the Water Management (General) Amendment Regulation 2021 could have the opposite effect, and reward irrigators with licences that they didn’t have before, making the practice legal, after decades of its legality historically being under constant scrutiny.  

Justin Field, who introduced the disallowance motion, said that the Government hasn’t got the policy right. 

“The Government’s plan is a gift to a handful of large corporate irrigators, many of whom built dams far in excess of known caps. This is as much about equity for farming neighbours and other licence holders as it is about downstream communities and the environment,” Mr Field said. 

“This vote hopefully creates the reset we need to restart constructive dialogue with the Government including over downstream water targets, limiting trading, winding back the 500 per cent rule and regular independent reviews of the impacts of this licensing on the floodplains,” he said.

The 500 per cent rule refers to irrigators being allowed to take up to 500 per cent of their yearly allowance of water in any one year, to account for drought years where they may see none. 

Nature Conservation Council Chief Executive Chris Gambian said that the disallowment was the best decision for river health, First Nations peoples and downstream communities, expecting that the proposed regulation would have diverted hundreds of billions of litres from the river and wetlands. 

“The new Water Minister, Kevin Anderson, now has an opportunity to sit down in good faith and understand the perspectives of the whole community on floodplain water harvesting,” Mr Gambian said. 

“The regulation would have handed hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of water access licences to selected landholders for free,” he said. 

Parties in favour of the disallowment have put on pressure to place more consideration on the findings of the recent inquiry, Mr Banasiak from Shooters Fishers and Farmers said that he found it to be redundant. 

“The Floodplain Harvesting Inquiry and report…was so factually incorrect and ideologically driven I was compelled to write a dissenting report and draw a line in the sand between political manipulation and sound policy,” Mr Banasiak said. 

Regardless, it’s back to the drawing board for the new water policy, and while everyone is in agreement that the regulations are a necessity, the decades long debate on the topic shows that any agreement won’t come easily.