She travelled around the region last week, visiting Balranald, Barham, Mathoura and Deniliquin.
“I attended the NSW Farmers local group breakfast and unsurprisingly the main topic was water, although tax and farm family transfers were also raised,” Ms Ley told the Pastoral Times.
“NSW Farmers has been active in this region and is a great group of local farmers and businesses, so I take their words very seriously.’’
Ms Ley said the group asked her ‘‘to do all I can to secure a better yield on their general security allocation’’.
“We all know the balance has tilted unfairly away from the farmers of this region who are on general security allocations, and while NSW Government is very much involved in this, the Commonwealth has a role to play when it comes to how the Murray Darling Basin Authority runs the river and runs it efficiently,” Ms Ley said.
“I believe that in the operations of the river Murray, there is room to move and water to be saved and become an allocation for farmers.
“When water was shared between the three states, last re-negotiated in 1982, there was an understanding that more water was coming down from the northern basin into the Darling, but we are not seeing that.
“So if we are not getting the flows, is there a way of re-negotiating the arrangement and agreement between the states and sharing the water differently?
“We can’t force that on South Australia, Victoria or Queensland, we can only do it by having a constructive conversation around the table, which we do regularly at ministerial council. I am hopeful that understanding and conversations will lead to some positive change.”
Ms Ley also spoke about the new Federal Water Minister, Keith Pitt, and said his focus would be on ensuring the Murray Darling Basin Plan is ‘‘supported by communities much better than it is now’’.
“People are very unhappy with the Basin Plan,” she said.
“But I think our new water minister, in the conversations I have had with him and I know him well, is listening and he understands it needs to be an adaptive plan.
“Keith is really keen to hear from farmers in our region and I think he is prepared to make changes inside the Basin Plan. Most people I speak to don’t want to see the Basin Plan torn up, but they do want to see changes within the plan that recognise the needs of every community in a stronger way and to better adapt to changing conditions.”
While in the area, Ms Ley also inspected projects funded by the Federal Government.
“I had the opportunity to get a briefing on our drought communities support projects and our regional fund upgrades in town, such as such the Napier St and Riverfront revitalisation projects and other beautification projects around town,” she said.
“All of these things have been funded by the Federal Government and I like to see these things are working well and the community is supported.”