Having dominated this year's state election, water will once again be a core theme for the federal vote.
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One especially turbulent theme facing current candidates for Farrer has been their policies around whether or not to support the returning of 450 gigalitres of water to the environment through the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
Labor candidate Kieran Drabsch says he supports the plan and if elected he will support Tony Burke's plan to scrap the cap on the amount of water which can be returned from a farm to the environment.
However, he denies that this policy will result in farmers being forced into any kind of buy backs.
"The 450 gigalitres will not be through buy backs it will be through on farm efficiencies and infrastructure development," Mr Drabsch said.
According to Mr Drabsch the stipulations of the Basin Plan state these on-farm infrastructure projects are to be funded to the order of 1.7 times the value of water.
The infrastructure scheme did not strike a chord with Coleambally Irrigator Roy Duffell who grows plumbs and Chinese dates.
Mr Duffell said such infrastructure projects would be of little use to high security water users which he says are forced to maintain high efficiency in their usual farming practices.
Mr Duffell said the only growers he can think of would stand to benefit from better water infrastructure are flood irrigators.
However he does believe some general security irrigators could be convinced to part with water in exchange for subsidised solar infrastructure.
Also on the agenda this year has been a crack down on illegal pumping especially those irrigators siphoning from rivers.
Among those pushing for such a crackdown has been state Member for Murray Helen Dalton who has said she would like to see standardised metering and a "no meter no pump" rule applied across the Basin.
Meanwhile Mr Drabsch has also based his campaign around similar objectives, stating that he would be willing to support Ms Dalton in pursuing those two goals.
If elected Mr Drabsch has also promised to establish an independent national water theft task force in partnership with the Australian Federal Police and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
Supportive of such a crackdown is Griffith resident Matt Moon who runs a weekly Kayaking tour on the Murrumbidgee in Darlington Point.
While he admits that wildlife on the Point are not currently distressed and a lower Murrumbidgee does make for a more scenic Kayaking trip, given more trees and fish become visible, Mr Moon says more control is needed to ensure the flow of water never stops all together.
"The most important thing is that we keep a flow so that it doesn't become stagnant and the oxygen keeps moving," Mr Moon said.
"I've been on the river where I've almost seen the river flow backwards because of pumps, in three or four days I've seen it drop a metre, I think it's OK if they do that but the river has to keep flowing.
"I definatley think the river pumps need to metered a lot harder, because what happens is the farmers end up going against each other because there is so much water here and the blokes downstream start missing out and they turn their pumps up."
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