FEDERAL Water Minister Murray Watt has been delivered a blunt message a regional group of councils: the Murray Basin Plan is not delivering for northern Victorian communities.
A delegation from the Murray River Group of Councils led by chair Cr Dan  Straub has met with the minister.
Cr Straub highlighted the vital role that water plays in sustaining northern Victorian 
communities.
“Across the Murray River Group of Councils region, agriculture and food manufacturing underpin everything. Our region produces more than $8.3 billion in food every year, and around 16,000 local jobs are tied directly to this,” Cr Straub said.
“Our councils and communities are on the frontline of the Basin Plan’s impacts and it is vital that our voices are heard, that’s why we came to Canberra.
“We really appreciate the Minister’s willingness to meet with us and hear the concerns of our communities and our industries and to engage with our ideas for
collaborative and pragmatic solutions.
“The meeting was positive and the discussion open which was welcome.
“We were able to tell of our belief that the Basin Plan is not delivering for our region.
“We don’t support buy backs, and especially the Government’s current, non-strategic programs of open market water purchases as these put our irrigation districts and our farmers at risk.
“We were happy to hear from Minister Watt that he wants to minimise the negative impacts on our communities while seeing the Basin Plan delivered.”
The councils, including Loddon told Mr Watt of  the importance of genuine investment to offset the negative impacts of the Basin Plan.
“We don’t want trinkets or grant programs,” Cr Straub said, “we need meaningful funding that unlocks investment to keep jobs in our region and creates new economic activity that bring new permanent jobs to our communities.”
“The other key principle that MRGC has that we made clear to the minister is that new jobs need to be created in the communities where jobs are being lost – moving jobs to regional centres won’t help our towns” said Cr Straub.
“We are all committed to protecting our rivers, wetlands and floodplains,” Cr Straub said. “But achieving that doesn’t have to come at the cost of our towns.”