Murray Valley winegrape growers face serious economic risks from water buybacks, the Member for Mallee told Federal Parliament last night, as debate heats up on Labor’s agricultural policies in the final sitting fortnight before Easter.

“The looming threats of forced exits, water buybacks and widespread vineyard abandonment pose not only economic risks but also significant biosecurity hazards and mental health consequences for farmers,” Dr Webster told Parliament as she spoke on a Coalition motion urging immediate support for winegrape growers amid a grape glut.

“What’s Labor’s solution for our farmers? Tax them more. The biosecurity levy before the parliament will hit these struggling wine grape growers with more of the cost of handling the biosecurity threat brought by foreign competitors sending their product into our country. The Nationals have pushed for a container levy to fund biosecurity, imposing the cost where the threat actually emerges, but, no, Labor wants to hit Aussie farmers for 10 per cent more than their 2020-21 levy contributions, kicking them while they’re down.”

Dr Webster savaged the Albanese Labor Government’s water buyback program, given the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has on average used only 70 per cent of the water it holds in any given year. Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek’s first Commonwealth water buybacks in the Basin since 2020 cost an estimated $205 million for more than 26 GL of water.

“In the last reporting year, the CEWH carried more than half its water holdings over. Minister Plibersek is buying more water from so-called ‘willing sellers’ – more like distressed sellers. Some were paid as little as $120 a tonne for their grapes when production costs are $300 per tonne. Labor’s buybacks to ward off green votes in Adelaide come at the expense of our Murray-Darling Basin irrigation communities who grow about 40 per cent of the country’s food and fibre.”

Later today Dr Webster will follow Shadow Agriculture Minister and Nationals Leader David Littleproud speaking against Labor’s biosecurity levy proposal, which has been rejected by the nation’s many commodity representative groups including the National Farmers Federation, Grain Producers Australia, Cattle Australia, Sheep Producers Australia, Wool Producers Australia, Australian Grape and Wine, the Australian Table Grape Association and AusVeg.