Regional Australia is being hung out to dry by a city-centric Labor party more interested in gaining the support of inner-city activists than delivering real outcomes for Regional Australia.

Nationals Senator for New South Wales, and Federal Shadow Minister for Water, Emergency Management, and Fisheries and Forestry, Ross Cadell, declared Labor had sold out regional Australia with increases to water buyback volumes to appease The Greens in return for their support on the controversial Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EBPC) reforms.

“Here we have it again, the city folk of the Labor party worrying about the latte sippers of Balmain and Milsons Point before the people of Balranald and Mildura,” Cadell said.

“You only have to look at the way Labor has prioritised environmental flows over agriculture when it comes to water buybacks to realise they are completely out of touch.

“Labor’s plan has been a vague bunch of ideology, backed by input from environmentalists not farmers.

Senator Cadell pointed to recent commentary from the National Irrigators Council who declared the announcement of an additional 130 gigalitres of buy backs by Minister Watt as misguided and without consideration of what really happens in the basin.

“This was a missed opportunity for Minister Watt to put politics aside and send a strong message about refocusing the Basin Plan on outcomes, not just numbers” CEO, Zara Lowien said.

“As more water, is not what the science says the environment needs most, and adding more, comes at a huge cost to the Australian Government, and our farming and rural communities, now facing less water and higher costs that are not being considered properly nor adequately addressed by the Sustaining Basin Communities program, as promised.”

Cadell added that “water buybacks had been an unmitigated disaster and that Labor had failed the people of Regional Australia.

“You can’t do a deal with The Greens and keep agriculture afloat at the same time.”