Opposition leader Tony Abbott received a rock-star reception from a fired up crowd.

He was loudly applauded and cheered when he entered the meeting, when he spoke and also when he departed, albeit early.

In contrast, Federal Water Minister Tony Burke was jeered as he walked in the front entrance with one person yelling, “Get out of here; go home”.

The audience regularly interjected when he spoke and booed when answering questions on the government’s plan.

As the Minister tried to explain the reasons for his presence at the meeting to hear the different community views, one audience member yelled, “That’s bullshit – you don’t listen” and another accused him of only attending to “Get your photo taken”.

A mock coffin was carried into the meeting saying, “RIP Basin Communities” but overall the crowd’s behaviour was largely kept in check with no repeat of last year’s wild scenes where copies of the Guide to a draft Basin Plan were burnt and a mock horse’s head was thrown onto the stage.

Rankin Springs farmers, Jock Munro and Andrew Ryan said the government was showing contempt for farmers and breeding business “insecurity” by planning to radically reduce water for primary production, which was the community’s lifeblood.

Mr Ryan said Mr Burke was also responsible for deregulating the bulk wheat export market which also removed business certainty and confidence.

“Every time it’s Tony Burke; when are they going to stop,” he said.

Mr Abbott said the Basin was home to two million people and produced 40 per cent of Australia’s agricultural output as the nation’s food bowl and potentially the Asia’s food bowl.

“…we want to ensure that it continues to be the greatest food producing area of our country,” he said.

“Food security is an increasing issue in the modern world and we won’t have food security if we don’t also have water security.”

Mr Abbott said one aspect of the Murray-Darling Basin debate that has upset him is that the “whole tenor of so much of our conversation in Canberra” has been an assumption that somehow the country’s farmers, foresters and fishermen are against the environment.

“Wrong,” he said.

“The farmers of this country are the best environmentalists, the best conservationists that we have.

“You live off the land you know that you have got to protect the land because if you don’t look after the land there’s no more living for you; there’s no more living for your children and your grandchildren.

“If there is one group in this country who have a commitment to continuity, who have a commitment to doing the right thing by future generations, it is the farmers of this country and the farmers of the Murray-Darling Basin.

“You’re trying to practise the best possible environmental farming methods and we should try to put more water into the river for environmental purposes but we can’t put more water into the river for environmental purposes in ways that destroy your livelihoods and damage these communities.

“I think we can get significant amounts of water back into the river and we can do that by actually intelligently spending the $5.4 billion I think it is that the Howard Government put aside for infrastructure improvements.”

Mr Abbott said the Coalition would not support a bad plan and wanted a plan that secured the future of rural communities and provided certainty.

He also acknowledged Mr Burke for “having the guts to turn up”.

He said, “you’ve got to respect a bloke who is prepared to turn up and face what he knows is going to be a hostile audience”.

“In the end, what we have all got to understand is that for you in this room and for the people living throughout the basin, water is life,” he said.

“You have a stake in this system in a way that, dare I say it, Bob Brown and his colleagues in Canberra just don’t and that’s why it is important that this government spends more time listening to people like you and less time being dictated to by Bob Brown and the Greens.”

Griffith City Council Mayor Mike Neville said the political elephant in the room was in South Australia where politics was central to their attitude towards water planning reforms.

But he said, “we have to take the politics out of it” to ensure the future of rural communities and food security.

MDBA Chairman Craig Knowles promised to keep working with Basin communities once the crowd had dispersed and the media had gone but warned, simply rejecting the Plan “won’t make the problem go away”.

He said there was a wide range of views within the river system, including irrigation communities who say, “one drop of water’s too much” and environmentalists who believe 4000 gigalitres should be the minimum volume of Sustainable Diversion Limits and not the draft Plan’s proposed 2750GL.

Mr Burke said there was a range of views on the Plan throughout the different Basin communities.

But he said he wanted a Plan that resolved many of the river system’s long term problems.

He said a Basin Plan would be presented before parliament next year but so far, the Greens were the only party that have said they will vote against it.

Members of the Griffith business community spoke to the meeting and said the proposed water cuts would see the gross value of irrigated production drop by $300 million a year, resulting in thousands of jobs lost and “enormous” flow on impacts for the local community.

They also spoke about some of the immediate impacts of the government’s water planning processes, creating genuine business uncertainty and reduced farm-land and residential property values.

“Once productive capacity is taken away with this plan, it’s lost forever,” said Les Worland, president of the Riverina Winemakers Association.