Source: Sarina Locke, ABC Rural
The Queensland round of water buybacks begins today, offering the chance for Queensland irrigators to sell their water allocations to the Federal Government under the $400 million Water Initiative.
In the meantime we've seen the Queensland government offer a gift of 10 Giga Litres, mostly from the Warrego, back into the Murray Darling basin.
That's been called useless, and not scientifically based.
The Queensland government has "gifted" 10.6 billion litres of water back to the Murray Darling river system.
The water is from unallocated reserves in the Warrego, Nebine, Moonie and Border Rivers.
* 8 billion litres will come from the Warrego,
* 1.1 billion litres from the Moonie River;
* 1 billion in the Nebine River and
* 500 million litres in the Border Rivers.
Queensland water minister, Craig Wallace says "Queensland is serious in its efforts to help the Commonwealth save the Murray Darling and today's announcement is further proof of that commitment.''
Mr Wallace denies the 10.6 gigalitres is a 'drop in the bucket'.
The Queensland opposition's Ray Hopper is unimpressed. He says the water is just a 'puddle' that will never make it down to the Murray Darling system anyway, and is unallocated water that was always going to flow down the rivers and out of Queensland.
Mr Hopper says Craig Wallace should apologise to people in cotton growing communities like St George and Dirranbandi .
Senator Bill Heffernan is chairing the Rural and Regional Transport Committee looking at the lower lakes and the whole Murray Darling Basin. He's calling for better science before any more water allocations or buybacks.
"Putting it into context... with that 10 Giga litres of water; eight-and-a-half gigalitres of water at Carnarvon, WA, produces over $60 million dollars worth of income in the Murray Darling Basin it produces $3 million worth of cotton. SO this is a 'pig-in-a-poke' sort of a strategy, it may be well intended but it's is useless.
"The original water resource plan for these rivers including the Culgoa and the Warrego, where allegedly had science applied to them, in fact they had none.
"They've got to go back and do a full environmental study with a view to what science is telling us in the future."
He says in the Lower Murray Darling that they'll continue to get the flows they've been receiving for the past 50 years, and Bill Heffernan says that's not going to happen.
He's equally critical of the Toorale sale, with $24 million for the 91,000 hectare property on the Warrego and Darling Rivers and the Commonwealth he says bought it "sight unseen, you'd have thought they'd have gone and had a look at least."
