THE High Court has rejected a challenge by businessman Doug Shears to the right of governments to cut farmers' water use without full compensation, in a judgement that opens the way for the compulsory aquisition of irrigation licences.
According to The Australian Financial Review, Mr Shears' agribusiness, ICM, had challenged the constitutional validity of a $135 million scheme to pay farmers in NSW for dramatically reducing their groundwater entitlements, arguing the compensation was unfair and unjust.
But six of the seven judges of the High Court yesterday rejected this argument and ordered the company, which is Australia's largest privately owned agribusiness, to pay costs. Justice Dyson Heydon wrote a dissenting judgement.
The judges found that the NSW government's decision to reduce the groundwater licences of ICM and its corporate farming arm Hillston by almost 70 per cent was not an acquisition of property and therefore did not trigger the constitutional requirement that just compensation be paid.
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