Tony Burke appears to have performed a backflip on lifting the 1500-gigalitre cap on Commonwealth buyouts of irrigation communities’ water.
Last Wednesday, Burke told The Weekly Times he did not see the need to lift the 1500GL cap, since there was still room for the government to buy more.
He went on to highlight that the only circumstances where the cap would have to be breached was if a swath of the 605GL sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism water efficiency projects identified under the plan failed to deliver.
‘The only circumstance (to lift the cap) is if 605GL isn’t reached. If a very large number of projects don’t stack up. It would be an extreme situation’.
He went on to argue it was unlikely one of the largest projects – the Menindee Lakes reconfiguration — was unlikely to fall over.
Yet by Monday this week Labor’s Monday caucus meeting had agreed to introduce a private members bill in the Senate this week to remove the 1500GL cap”.
