RIVER YARNS: THE MURRAY-DARLING MYTHS: WEEK SEVEN
Talking about River Yarns
With assistance from the Walkley Foundation, McPherson Media Group has commissioned Jane Ryan, a consultant with long experience and deep knowledge of water and resource management in the Murray-Darling Basin, to unravel the complex issues surrounding the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
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Jane’s brief is to do so without the bias and hyperbole that has accompanied most commentary on the plan since its inception 14 years ago.
At a time when the Federal Government seeks to amend the plan to give effect to election promises to South Australia, Jane’s analysis will canvas what the plan has achieved already in the long history of resource management in the basin.
She explores the shortcomings of a political compromise on ‘a number’ for water recovery, when what is really required is a nuanced approach to securing the original ambitions for the plan.
In this seventh article in the series, Jane discusses the revised Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
CHANGING THE AGREEMENT
We’re coming to the end of our yarns – I hope you feel that you have a little more information to consider the next time politicians and advocates talk about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in the media.
We thought it might be useful to go back to the August 2023 announcement where, for the first time in the complex and contentious Murray-Darling Basin history, a federal minister made a unilateral decision without agreement.
We think it is particularly useful given the history of Federation and the agreed way to manage the basin.
Since the Federation came together in 1901 to declare water a state right and responsibility, decisions about how the Murray-Darling Basin would be managed have been by agreement.
This is the first time in more than 100 years that this is not the case and, after being one of the strongest communities to agree to Federation, Victorians are being ignored and dismissed.
What has happened to drive us to this precipice to disaster?
Currently our communities are facing unfettered open tender buybacks of a volume of water that matches the water now being delivered into the nation’s biggest irrigation district.
This yarn explores the infamous announcement and some of the compounding factors that led us here.
Background to the 2023 announcement
There are two elements that stand out as diabolical changes to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan as we know it.
The lack of agreement and move away from collaboration as Australia’s primary way of rehabilitating waterways and their catchments. And the change in priority of the original water recovery targets to now be focused on the extra water.
In effect this announcement removes the original basin plan socio-economic protections while adopting buybacks as a water recovery method with proven impacts in the community.
As we discussed in the River Yarns timeline piece last year, there are some critical deadlines for the basin plan implementation.
The big ones are Water Resource Plans to be finished and accredited by 2019 and the environmental delivery works projects by June 2024.
The way the Water Act had written those dates, either the agreed formal process for negotiated extensions had to be initiated to give certainty and reduce reputational risk, or the hard way – legislative change was going to be required.
And then there is the attempt to deal with deadlines where it has been sold as being generous, but actually it was administrative requirement that is not political at all.
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority may have only told the Federal Government in July 2023 it was not possible to meet the timing of the basin plan, but I can tell you everyone else was telling previous Commonwealth governments from about 2017 that those timelines were unrealistic.
In the previous timeline yarn, we discussed that it was incorrect to float the idea that nothing had been achieved in the basin plan until 2023. At the same time, it is also inaccurate to say that decisions shouldn’t have been made along the way.
But they needed to be made together and this announcement has the potential to set back collaborative decision-making, having unintended consequences of environmental and social damage in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Did you know that the historic part of the August 22 announcement was that it was the first time that the states had not agreed to the ‘Agreement’?
The August announcement proclaimed an agreement had been struck to implement the basin plan through an agreed interdependent package of measures.
This agreement did not include the Victorian Government, one of the largest catchments of the southern connected basin.
There was also a dissenting statement in the fine print from the NSW Government (paragraph 8), the other large catchment, suggesting they didn’t agree with buybacks but were happy to receive funding.
Again, if you believe the public commentary that characterises any basin plan negotiations as a heap of in-fighting, you will probably find it hard to believe that, despite differences, since 1910 decisions about the Murray-Darling Basin have largely been by consensus.
Even the takeover of the basin plan by the Commonwealth back in 2010 included the back-and-forth negotiations before agreement, despite strong opinions about whether a Commonwealth takeover was the best step forward.
As we’ve discussed in previous yarns, there has been a strong history of collaboration with government and communities that have seen successful environmental outcomes.
This August 2023 announcement saw the Federal Government historically make a unilateral decision, take a top-down approach, and centralise landscape rehabilitation activity led from Canberra.
This announcement on paper seems a political and ideological one, where regional communities are portrayed as doing the wrong thing feel disheartened and disregarded as a result.
It seems punitive against communities that have done all that has been asked of them, and a disdainful brush-off when it continues to identify the impacts of how elements like buybacks would impact their communities.
Did you know the announcement changes the legal agreement that was made back in 2012?
One of the biggest, most controversial parts of the announcement is changing the priority of the extra water recovery target and being explicit that it can be achieved in the very way that previously was promised would not be used.
This is the worst part of the announcement in my eyes – a cynical and bad faith U-turn on the original agreement.
It is debatable whether Victoria (and potentially NSW) would have signed up to the original basin plan had the then Commonwealth set it up like this 2023 legislation.
The original basin plan was more than just one number – it identified agreed water recovery for each waterway valley to be recovered first. At the time, it was agreed that buybacks had proven impacts and so would be minimised.
The basin plan included socio-economic criteria, ensuring water recovery needed to be done with care in light of these proven impacts.
There has been more recent commentary that open tender buybacks don’t have the impact previously identified.
The Federal Government’s selected academics suggest there is less impact than Victoria and NSW claim but stop short at saying there’s been no impact at all.
And what is clear in this announcement is that the biggest change has come in the legal priority and wording around the ‘up to 450 Gl’ of extra water.
The original basin plan in 2012 was negotiated on the need to meet water recovery targets in each of the valleys, as well as the delivery works needed to get water to where it was needed.
The extra water was negotiated with the states as only being recovered if it didn’t impact regional communities. The modelling showed reduced benefit of extra water locally and was seen as being largely for South Australia.
Why Victoria can’t support the announcement
While the announcement may have had stated good intentions of rehabilitating the environmental condition of the Murray-Darling Basin, I really can’t see how it supports those responsible for delivering on the ground.
This new centralised approach where there is no accountability from the decision-makers to regional impacted communities is not working. This new approach of imposing unilateral decisions has already failed in solving complex, cumulative issues.
Awareness of successful approaches is critical – in this region in particular, we know the recipe is for collaboration on plans for regular consistent action with local people engaged, as well as local agencies focused and decision-makers on the same page.
Across the globe, top-down centralised unilateral decisions end up in court. It’s why water experts visit Australia to understand our approach. It’s why water managers in India and China have set up consultative committees of water users.
Any further water recovery needs to be focused on the decommissioning of redundant infrastructure, just as we have shown over the past 15 years.
We need to continue to identify system infrastructure that disconnects our waterways, holds water that is no longer needed and irrigation infrastructure that no longer has water delivered because of changes in water availability and community water needs.
And of course, agreement on a way forward is always a key element in improving the condition of our waterways. Can’t do much without it.
NEXT: Our final River Yarn will highlight the myths, distortions and failures of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
About the author
Jane Ryan — a former school captain at Notre Dame College in Shepparton — was deputy chief of staff to former Victorian Water Minister Lisa Neville, and has worked in senior roles in water resources and catchment management, including Director of Rural Water Policy and Programs, Strategic Engagement Manager for River Health and Consultation Manager for the Northern Region Sustainable Water Strategy.
During the millennium drought, Jane was involved in the development of the key water policies that remain the cornerstone of water management in northern Victoria, including environmental water recovery targets, carryover arrangements and changes to allocation water policy for the Goulburn and Murray systems in response to climate change.