http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-24/top-water-bureaucrat-offered-confidential-...Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Irrigation lobbyists offered access to confidential government documents
he top water bureaucrat in NSW, Gavin Hanlon, has been secretly recorded offering to confidentially share internal government information with irrigation lobbyists — documents he proposed to strip of government logos and share via a special Dropbox account — to assist their lobbying against the contentious Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
One of the cases under investigation by the former Strategic Investigations Unit involved a prominent cotton grower from the NSW and Queensland border at Mungindi, Anthony Barlow.
What is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan again?
The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has remained controversial ever since its introduction back in 2012. So, why is it back on the agenda?
Documents seen by Four Corners show he was pumping water during an embargo in 2015 which had been established to ensure sufficient water flowed down the Barwon-Darling system to replenish Broken Hill's dwindling drinking supply.
The embargo, which ran during the first six months of 2015, was gazetted under NSW law and publicly advertised.
But when questioned by NSW officials, Mr Barlow claimed he had received permission to take the water from the then NSW minister for water, Kevin Humphries.
"We sat in a Barwon-Darling water users meeting at Bourke where the then-minister, Kevin Humphries, stated on three separate occasions, after being questioned directly by the members of the room, is it an event-by-event basis? To which he said, 'Yes, it has to be announced that flow in the river is embargoed,'" Mr Barlow said.
"I thought that would be enough, he was the Minister."
Mr Humphries did not respond to a request for a comment.
In a formal briefing for senior departmental officials, investigators wrote that as many as
1.191 gigalitres — or 1.1 billion litres — may have been pumped on Mr Barlow's property Burren Downs in contravention of NSW law.
Mr Barlow declined to comment.