Fred Hooper says he interpreted offer as an attempt to get him to persuade Labor to support Coalition’s plan to reduce water for environmental flows

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The government offered an Indigenous group $10m in water entitlements as it tried to get its plan to reduce water for environmental flows in the Murray-Darling basin through the Senate, a senior Indigenous leader has said.

Fred Hooper, who heads the Northern Murray-Darling Basin Aboriginal Nations group, said he interpreted the 11th-hour offer as an attempt to get him to persuade Labor to support the government.

Hooper was in Canberra last month to lobby Labor and crossbench senators, including Derryn Hinch and Pauline Hanson, to vote for a disallowance motion that ultimately blocked the government’s plan.

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The Senate’s vote had been delayed several times during the previous week as the shadow water minister, Tony Burke, negotiated with the government over its plan to cut 70 gigalitres from the annual allocation set aside to restore health to the ailing river system.

Hooper said the offer was made by Nektarios Tsirbas, an adviser to the minister, David Littleproud, in a morning phone call on 14 February.

“It was $10m to buy water for Aboriginal people if I supported their amendments,” Hooper said. “I saw it as the government’s way to get me to change Labor’s mind and vote against the disallowance. If I’d accepted the offer the Wilcannia mob downstream would have had my guts for garters.”

Aboriginal communities in New South Wales have been hard hit by the Darling river’s deterioration in recent years, especially in Wilcannia, where the water has again stopped flowing and a red alert for toxic blue-green algae is in place.

Tsirbas denied he had offered Hooper any inducement to persuade Labor to change its position.

“Fred has misinterpreted our discussion,” Tsirbas said. “I described all the issues we were negotiating with Labor, including our commitments around Indigenous engagement.”

Tsirbas said he could not remember if $10m was offered, but confirmed that an amount designated for “economic water” was proposed. He said the money would have been given to the national Indigenous Land Council to invest directly in water on behalf of the basin’s Indigenous groups.

“Yes, it was offered at short notice, but these kinds of negotiations move quickly,” he said.

Hooper, who represents dozens of Indigenous nations across the north of the basin, said the offer also included two paid positions, one in the Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations Group (NBAN) and one in the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN).

Hooper said he told Tsirbas he “was not prepared to go back to Tony Burke for the offer that he’d provided”.

“I said I didn’t have the authority to accept any offer and that he’d have to offer me $100m before I’d start to take it seriously,” Hooper told Guardian Australia.

All the research, the science, shows Aboriginal communities need more water, not less Fred Hooper

“I would have been punished severely for supporting an amendment to take 70 gigalitres out of the river system. All the research, the science, shows Aboriginal communities need more water, not less,” he said.

Indigenous groups have argued for years that the northern basin’s annual 390 gigalitres for environmental flows is not enough to save the system.

A source familiar with the basin plan said Hooper told them about the last-minute offer.

“I was amazed that an offer of this type was made,” the source said. “I said to Fred, ‘You have to weigh it up – $10m might get you three gigalitres. It’s not much shared between 85,000 people.’”

The source said they did not advise Hooper what to do but they were later “relieved” to know he had turned down the offer.

The disallowance motion was passed later that day, with the support of Labor and several crossbenchers. It blocked the government’s proposed reduction in environmental water coming from northern basin rivers and sparked immediate threats from the NSW and Victorian governments that they would walk away from the $13bn Murray-Darling basin plan.

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Littleproud, a Queensland National, became water and agriculture minister in last year’s reshuffle. The National party has previously not countenanced any specific Indigenous right to water, despite references in the basin plan to Indigenous “cultural” use.

If Labor had accepted the offer, it might have provoked a strong backlash from National party members.

Burke is now negotiating with the government over proposed amendments to allow irrigators in the southern basin to keep an extra 650 gigalitres of water a year. A second Greens-initiated disallowance motion must come before Parliament by 8 May.

Weeks after the first motion was passed, a leaked 2017 report revealed the Murray-Darling Basin Authority believed the poor state of the Darling was due to upstream water extraction by irrigators. The authority had held the report for several months before the crucial vote, but had not released it. Burke said it showed Labor had been right in supporting the disallowance.