Cotton Industry
Ms Cate Faehrmann: I recently made a trip to north-western New South Wales, along the Macquarie, Namoi and Barwon-Darling rivers. I witnessed irrigated cotton production on a scale I could not previously imagine. I drove past cotton modules lined up for kilometre after kilometre. Some say that this is a success story, an economic boon to regional economies. Everyone I met in these communities say that the cotton industry is the antithesis of a success story. It is an industry that is allowed to take too much water out of the rivers and flood plains and, in turn, robs livelihoods, lifestyles and the environment downstream. All it gives back to communities is polluted run-off from irrigated fields.
I visited floodplain graziers in the Macquarie Marshes who told me that their productivity has halved in the past 20 years because of increased water extractions for cotton upstream. I visited Walgett, where the Namoi joins the Barwon-Darling-Baaka River. The people of Walgett used to call the Namoi their supermarket. In living memory, they relied on it daily for fish, yabbies and mussels, all of their drinking water, recreation and cultural use. During my visit both rivers were running high following good rain in upper catchments. Despite this, the water in the Namoi was a bright putrid green. It was not drinkable. People are scared to eat fish from it or swim in it. Even with high flows, it looks like a dying river. It is not a supermarket anymore.
The water from the river is too polluted for the local treatment plant to make drinkable. The Government's alternative drinking supply for Walgett is bore water, which has sodium levels fifteen times higher than what is safe for people with severe medical conditions. The Walgett Aboriginal Medical Service recently found that Walgett's water insecurity was some of the worst in the world, even compared to developing countries like Bangladesh. People are going to bed thirsty for lack of clean water.
The community has to source its own drinking water, either through buying bottled water or a reverse osmosis kiosk station funded and installed by the Dharriwaa Elders Group. Every module of cotton that is trucked through Walgett is subsidised by Walgett residents paying to supply their own drinking water. On the Barwon River at Brewarrina, I heard that the water sitting behind the weir is heavily polluted with run-off from upstream cotton farms. That pollution will sit there until the next flood washes it further downstream. Across all three valleys I witnessed large‑scale land clearing taking place on properties for future cotton production.
There is a mythology around cotton that is used to defend the terrible impacts the industry has on our river systems and the people who rely on them. One myth is that cotton is a massive employer that creates economic prosperity for the country. In fact, cotton is one of the lowest contributors to regional economies, providing less than 5 per cent of jobs in cotton-producing regions. Another myth is that the total water extracted to irrigate cotton is managed to a sustainable limit. The Murray-Darling Basin Cap was supposed to limit irrigation to the level of irrigation development that existed in 1994. The sustainable diversion limit under the Basin Plan was supposed to further decrease the level of irrigation in 2012. Despite this, river flows in northern New South Wales have more than halved in the past 20 years. Governments and the cotton industry have tried to blame this on climate change. Research by the CSIRO, the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer, and the Murray‑Darling Basin Authority all demonstrate that increases in extractions are the major cause for the reduction, not declining rainfall.
The cotton industry boasts about its water efficiency. It claims it is using about half the water per bale than it did 30 years ago. What the cotton industry does not say is that it is growing nearly three times the number of bales per hectare, and the hectares planted have increased by 50 per cent in the northern New South Wales basin. Water used to irrigate cotton in the northern New South Wales basin has more than doubled since the Murray‑Darling Basin Cap was introduced. The Government continues to allow more water for cotton at every turn through enlarging weirs, approving massive new private storages and through generous—and, frankly, dodgy—water accounting rules and modelling. Want to save the Murray‑Darling Basin? It is time to stand up to big cotton.