Hot on the heels of Halloween, a NSW Nationals MP has painted a horror image of imminent water buybacks from farmers in the name of the environment.
Riverina MP Michael McCormack told Flow the October federal budget's provision for an unspecified sum to be spent buying Murray-Darling Basin water for farmers presented a horror scenario for local communities:
"It's like you're monitoring the blood bank and you've got Dracula outside, you know he's there you just don't know how much blood he's going to take.
"That water will be bought back out of those river communities and unfortunately, yes they pay down debt and do whatever they want with the money that they get and good luck to them. But: it takes away the water away, it takes the money that the water can create in those communities.
"It often takes the people away from them themselves, they head off to the Gold Coast, the community's left with stranded assets and the community pays a lot more in the long run for the next lot of water to come down the river.
"It's unfortunate, it's a lazy way of doing it - we don't know how much is the capability of Labor to take that water away."
Hear the full interview covering the Riverina gold in the Melbourne Cup and fate of the instant asset writeoff on the Flow podcast player below:
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