Australia’s $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan is in its tenth year. The plan had key objectives to save the Murray, restore the balance and do so in an adaptive way based on best available science.
Sadly, we continue to see the failure to adapt, the rampant expansion of unsustainable permanent plantings, the destruction of the river and a complete reluctance to adapt or change in the slightest.
There are numerous examples of how grave the failings are of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority in addressing and effectively managing our river system.
It often appears more of a bureaucratic PR exercise in selling their image than actual outcomes, the ones that were intended to be based on a triple bottom line of economic, environment and social.
A simple example of these failures to develop sensible policy is the fact that only certain classes of water get any environmental benefit attributed to them, despite the fact they travel the same water course, flow into the same forests, perform the same environmental function and are made of the same elements H2O.
Why would you not seek to account for all the benefits? Will the same soon be done for social or cultural? Maybe it isn’t about outcomes at all.
The current behaviour appears more about limiting supply, trading water for profit, shifting wealth from the common person to corporates and forgetting the lessons of the past.
One motivator for government was to push water to the highest value use.
Whether that be crop or water trading doesn’t seem to matter, nor does salinity, deliverability or creating new irrigation areas further from the source.
The sheer insanity of the basin’s direction can be demonstrated by the huge almond plantations adjacent to the Murray.
What were dryland farms 20 years ago are now intensive irrigation areas often using more water than rice or cotton per hectare with no regulation on salinity.
In these areas, you can clearly see native bushland and plantations dying due to an exploding salt problem.
If you have a salty water table above ground adjacent to the Murray, where do you think it will drain to?
To show how serious governments are to stop the impending trainwreck, Victoria, for example, put a moratorium on new developments.
It was a freeze on new pump sites, it does not stop a corporate from buying a property with a five megalitre per day pump and replacing it with a bank of five 200 megalitre per day pumps.
The words of the last 10 years appear to have been just that, words.
It doesn’t appear we are saving the Murray, restoring the balance, adapting or using best available science.
This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 7 July 2022.
