The trail of destruction that is the politically charged Murray Darling Basin Plan may have had its time in the sun as failings are laid bare. The court case of irrigators vs the MDBA, and last week’s suspension of NSW environmental water delivery has clearly demonstrated what locals have been concerned about, but remained unheard due to the dramatic power imbalance between the arbiter of truth, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and the political aspirations of the politicians involved.

Independent Member for Murray, Helen Dalton, called on Premier Chris Minns to come clean about water metering mistakes that have seen environmental flows halted across NSW.

The flows are overseen by the NSW Government and the Murray Darling Basin Authority,” Helen said. “This is proof that NSW Water and the MDBA can’t meter and they can’t manage.

“This halting of environmental flows simply proves what farmers have been saying all along.

Water is getting mismanaged and the MDBA needs to be stopped.”

“They are out of control, and rural Australians need them out of our lives, “Helen said.

Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, Simon Banks, has admitted that the halt has occurred because water authorities have realised they don’t understand water sharing policies.

“These authorities literally wrote these policies,” Helen said. “And now they are saying they don’t even understand the policies they wrote and have been implementing.”

It didn’t get any better in the courtroom as MDBA have acknowledged overbank transfers are the least efficient way of sending water downstream and result in the highest losses of around 31-46 per cent.

In the courtroom room the plaintiffs’ Senior Counsel Tony Bannan said:

“We say and the evidence shows this, that the use of the overbank transfer system is exceedingly rare in the history of the operation of the river Murray system and is a blunt and inefficient instrument, if you like, to be avoided at all costs.”

The MDBA calculations are 55GL of operational water went overbank in 2018-19 and 420GL in 2019-20. The MDBA accepts 23GL of the 55GL and 135GL of the 422 was ‘lost’.

The plaintiffs contend the volumes were higher and this ‘lost’ water would otherwise have been available for allocation to farmers and irrigators. Due to its absence they were forced to pay increased temporary water costs to save some crops, whilst watching the majority of their labour wither and die – resulting in extreme losses of productivity for the region.

“We say that they were decisions that were not reasonable, not reasonably required, and contrary to their own operating parameters, guidelines and assessments at the time.” continued SC Bannan.

“And we say that involved mismanagement and flawed planning.

“We submit there is no evidence to suggest it even consulted its own plans in doing what it did. And we also submit that it relied on flawed modelling tools.”

Entering week three of the trial, the plaintiffs have uncovered evidence which they say shows the authority did not follow their own models, best practice and procedures, and were negligent and incompetent when they flooded the Barmah Milewa Forest four times in three years from 2017 to 2019.

Southern Riverina Irrigators (SRI) CEO Sophie Baldwin said “SRI and many other representative groups across the southern basin have been pointing out the flaws associated with implementation of this basin plan for many, many years, including MDBA mismanagement of water, which has continually fallen on deaf ears.

The question remains, when those who make the rules break the rules, do they face the same penalties as the peasants?

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 28 August 2025.