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April 16th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Queensland senator Barnaby Joyce has seized on independent modelling that claims the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has underestimated the social impact of water cuts to rural communities.
The authority’s draft plan recommends returning 2750 gigalitres of water to the river system annually.
But farmers and environmentalists are at odds on how much water should be cut.
Independent Economics modelled the social and economic impact of the basin authority’s draft plan on behalf of a group of Murrumbidgee Valley councils, community groups and irrigators.
The study disputes assumptions in the basin authority’s modelling that farmers will stay on the land despite selling off their water rights.
The independent modelling suggests the economic impacts of the water cuts would devastate towns like Griffith, Leeton and Coleambally.
The study said a 29 per cent reduction in irrigation water use would claim 2100 jobs – 700 in farming and processing and 1400 in urban-based service industries.
Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce said the basin authority had modelled the draft plan on the presumption that after water is sold the farmer would stay in the district.
“That’s like saying after a person sells their house, they’ll stay in the street,” he told Sky News on Monday.
“Of course they don’t. They leave and they leave with the money and what’s left behind is the economic dislocation of the district.”
Senator Joyce said the government’s modelling failed to understand that once water rights were sold off there was no point farming.
“What are you going to do if you have 20 acres of grapes and you haven’t got the water? Farm 20 acres of lawn or 20 acres of fresh air. How do you survive?” he said.
Senator Joyce said it was vital the government did not only look at the irrigators selling out but the towns left behind such as the “person who bought a chemist shop, the school teacher who moves to the district”.
Public submissions on the basin authority’s draft plan closed on Monday.
Senator Joyce admitted the coalition had not made a submission but said he was willing to work with Agriculture Minister Tony Burke to come up with a better plan.
“As defence lawyer our job is not to be the person in the dock,” Senator Joyce said.
“It’s not for us to come up a position.”
But he doesn’t support the “social and economic rug being pulled out of so many areas”.
The Australian Greens made a submission to the authority slamming the draft plan as deeply flawed.
“This plan locks in failure for the river and locks in failure for South Australia,” Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters in Adelaide on Monday.
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