Last week, the federal opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, announced that an elected Labor Party would take an additional 450GL of water from basin communities. The announcement came when Mr Albanese was in Adelaide. The move was labelled as disappointing by Victorian Water Minister Lisa Neville, telling rural ABC Radio, “NSW and ourselves would not agree to any of those changes.”

The policy by Mr Albanese has sent a shiver down the spine of communities that have watched the Murray being destroyed as water authorities exceed the natural constraints.

Mr Albanese believes the move would help the environment in channels and floodplains across SA, NSW and Victoria.

Questions remain over what Mr Albanese would do with the extra water, as both state and federal environment water holders carry over huge unused volumes of water effecting farmers’ allocations and even, as in the recent case of Victoria, sell environmental water on to the temporary market.

The first basin plan is littered with mismanagement, questionable science, sole focus on volumetric targets and a complete disregard for social, economic and on-farm environmental impacts. The Basin Plan even fails to acknowledge an environmental benefit from any other water than what government holds as environmental water. It’s one thing to say that the river channel requires a certain volume to remain healthy, but to ignore the bulk of the water that flows down it as not having any environmental benefit is madness.

Countless reports, ‘engagement’, reviews and the rapid erosion of the river have highlighted all these failings, yet a potential prime minister appears oblivious to the geographical diversity of issues, constraints and environments across the basin.

With city centric politics appearing more interested in getting elected, what hope does the health of our basin have?

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 14 April 2022.