More time needed to get drought plan right

It is stopping additional irrigation water from leaving the area, and therefore ensuring maximum available allocations for farmers during dry times.

It seems this issue is too politically sensitive to be addressed in the Drought Resilience Plan.

It merely suggests consolidating economic and social impact studies and “utilising the outputs … to support communities to adapt to the impact of water buybacks”.

While unnecessary buybacks may be current government policy, this may change with a change of government or policy direction.

A serious and effective Drought Resilience Plan for our region would take a firm stance against buybacks, despite the current political narrative, because they are the major threat to droughts having a greater impact.

If the final report is serious about future drought resilience, surely it would recommend buybacks be abandoned.

Unfortunately, it would seem the plan has been developed with government money and support, and therefore is not prepared to address this ‘elephant in the room’.

Perhaps it is not coincidental that our region’s mayors, in announcing the draft report, focused on their collaboration and synergies, rather than the report’s outcomes (or lack thereof).

The timeframes around report availability, promotion and feedback process also need to be questioned.

While there has been some promotion of the draft report, it could be argued it has not been adequate.

We believe more of the massive $560,000 report budget could have been spent advising the community the draft is available, and highlighting some of its proposed outcomes.

This would have provided organisations and individuals more information on its contents, and the need to read and digest the report, then present submissions to improve it.

We believe the combined councils should extend the date for submissions, promote the draft report more aggressively and extend the feedback process.

They could also do more to highlight its obvious shortcomings.