Thursday, 6 March 2025

Adjournment

La Trobe River management

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (17:14): (1051) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Water, and the action I seek is for the minister to finally make a decision on allocation of water availability in the La Trobe River system. The minister will be aware and knows all about this issue. The government made a decision in 2022 in the Central and Gippsland Region Sustainable Water Strategy, or SWS, to reallocate some water that had been set aside for a power station that was never built – 25 gigalitres in Blue Rock Dam.

I have been campaigning for some time for the government to allocate that water for productive use in Gippsland, particularly for irrigation along the La Trobe River system. The government made a decision back in 2022 that it would allocate 16 gigs of that water across three users – that is, the environment, traditional owners and irrigators, or farm use – and that it would make a decision after consultation on how the 16 gigs would be split up between those three users. Here we are 2½ years down the track, and the government still has not made a decision on that. It is just extraordinary that it has taken so long for the government to make a decision just on how you split up some water. I have said to the minister privately before that if you had just said, ‘It’s a third, a third, a third,’ we probably all would have been a bit cranky, but we would have got on with it. I would have liked to have seen more for irrigators, maybe the traditional owners might have wanted some more and the environmental NGOs might have wanted some more, but I think we would probably all just be happy if it was a third, a third, a third.

The point is there are farmers and landholders along the La Trobe system who would like to develop their farms and put some water on. There is great opportunity in irrigated agriculture to create new jobs and investment in our region, particularly in a region that is seeing the transition from coal-fired power and also of course the aftermath of the government’s disastrous decision to shut down the timber industry, which affects the Latrobe Valley and my area as well. There is an opportunity to get this happening. We just need the simple decision made. I ask the minister to come out now and make that decision, decide how the water is to be allocated and then actually get on with doing so – put it to the market and allow irrigators in particular to develop their farms, put some water on and create added value for our region, our state and our nation. This is an issue that has dragged on far too long, and I ask the minister to act quickly.