Producers have gone and borrowed money in good faith and developed those licences and now, they want to take them back. Fellas, we've got a potentially serious situation with this swamp. But other farmers claim the huge new developments have actually caused the problem. In the past few years, Cubbie Station has grown to become the country's biggest cotton producer with more than 13,000 hectares of land under cultivation. Claims it, too, will be hit hard by the water reforms don't sit well with much smaller farmers upstream.
Government needs to recognise it's the prolific development on a few properties causing the problem.
They need to go and deal with that problem. I can see no great need to wind back farms that have been under production for 30 years. It's something we're trying to work through, and there is no easy solution. In the St George irrigation area, farmers are now racing to build more dams, seeing this as the only way to withstand further cuts. If you're licensed and metered, the Government seems to have come out and hit those people first.