Despite the Federal Government saying it will look at all options, it appears that open-tender purchase of water is the option of choice — and socio-economic considerations will be about an individual irrigator’s willingness to sell again.
The legislation passed through Federal Parliament in December 2023 with the support of South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, after the shocking unilateral announcement in August that buybacks were on the table again.
Since then, a barrage of ads boiling the basin challenges down to a series of marketing slogans over pictures of national parks, have been playing on our TVs and social media.
This legislation is the solution to the woes of over-extraction of water out of rivers, the campaign says — by purchasing extra water, we will provide South Australia more drinking water and fix the whole system up for the next drought.
Never mind that the drinking water that South Australia takes out of the Murray River to be piped 800km out of the basin to Whyalla won’t be part of the water purchased.
Drinking water is part of the ‘consumptive pool’ so if the government was buying it for drinking water, it would not be adding to recovery for the environment.
Never mind that the current environmental catastrophes are in the northern basin — the southern-connected basin will likely be the focus.
The legislation now means that the delivery infrastructure and river operational rule projects are secondary even though the ability to achieve environmental outcomes are not likely without them.
And never mind that the issuing of new water licences was capped in the mid-1990s and Victorian catchment and waterway plans now share water differently to account for dry spells after the millennium drought.
Communities know that water sharing arrangements and compliance are the key to rehabilitating local waterways and floodplains.
The idea that changing the agreed basin plan to be less collaborative with local communities, and to prioritise the order of delivery of key components, is bewildering.
Even if you thought nothing had changed since 2012, it is good practice to share that burning platform with the community and their representatives to set out the need for action.
This just looks like another case of the ‘act first and fix it up later’ attitude that has landed previous Federal Governments in hot water.
Blowing up agreements going back to Federation is a risky approach to catchment management and basin communities are left with the consequences.
The worst-case scenario of this latest chapter is for environmental water not to be able to be used for rehabilitating our modified rivers and floodplains.
We are looking down the barrel of open-tender water purchase being done without any care for the regional and rural communities that make up the Murray-Darling Basin in northern Victoria.
My preferred approach
As you can tell, I am passionate about northern Victorian landscapes and the communities that live within them.
My involvement more than 10 years ago in the Northern Region Sustainable Water Strategy helps my clarity in how to successfully implement a plan for the rehabilitation of catchments and in particular water-dependent landscapes.
It is a simple plan in document, but a more difficult thing in operation because you need to bring the basin community with you. In my experience they will come if you deliberately engage on areas that are the how.
You need to share changing data and evidence, and identify project types that reduce any impacts that communities tell you about regularly and consistently.
The process starts with acknowledgement of existing conditions and values being enjoyed by basin communities.
It relies on getting those value-holders in a room to discuss them, what they mean to them and how best to balance those. This could mean wholesale changes, and those changes need to be clearly articulated.
All value-holders have to face the future of unpredictable water availability together.
This means getting local communities involved in local plans to invest in environmental outcomes on salinity, algal blooms and river bank reform.
It means local compliance to make sure the water we say is there is actually there.
Plus input from local ecologists on environmental flow studies to back up water recovery targets. And then investment on priorities from state and Commonwealth governments.
It also means using the precautionary principal, science and evidence-based decisions continue to be made on matters where the science may not be clear yet. Catchment and water managers need to be able to make bold decisions because the rate of difference from pre-Colonial landscapes is overwhelming. A ‘do nothing’ until perfect conditions or actions is a recipe for drying and distressed landscapes continuing to deteriorate.
Finally, any water recovery needs to be deliverable into high-value parts of the environment as a priority to be able to connect and link corridors with remnant biodiverse ecosystems.
It needs to be delivered in a way that deals with community flood risk.
And if it can be recovered in a way that minimises socio-economic impacts — why wouldn’t you do that?
Jane Ryan is the author of River Yarns: The Murray-Darling Myths series, which has run over several months in Country News. To see the final instalment, go to: https://www.countrynews.com.au/water/river-yarns-so-what-have-we-learned/
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