Death didn’t ride in on a pale horse in the dead of night; he stood at a pulpit in Adelaide and proudly announced to his fanatical legions of followers the further destruction of rural Australian communities and the rivers they rely on.

Just seven months into the job, the Albanese Government’s Environment and Water Minister, Murray Watt, has announced further water buybacks from the Southern Basin. With friends like the former Agriculture Minister, it’s hard to see why one needs enemies.

In announcing the purchase of a further 130GL from the Southern Basin, Watt, along with his predecessors, has missed the obvious fact that this water cannot be delivered down to the Lower Murray.

If you needed any more convincing that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is purely political, and being “at the table” or “in the tent” just gets you close enough to be knifed, then the latest announcement is it.

The report on The Feasibility of Relaxing Constraints in Northern Victoria released in June 2024 investigated the feasibility of relaxing constraints in the Goulburn River and 2 reaches of the Murray River, the Hume-Yarrawonga reach and Yarrawonga-Wakool reach.

Relaxing constraints is required if the Federal Government is to prop up the freshwater estuary myth of South Australia (read more here: Killing in the name of: How Coorong’s don’t make a right) and continue to dilute the Southern Ocean with vast volumes of our most precious resource. This begs the question, if European settlers operated within these natural constraints, how balance is a plan that requires the bypassing of them?

The feasibility study stated they used “hydrological models of the Goulburn and Murray systems to simulate over 100 years of different hydrological conditions to see how relaxing constraints would impact the river system. We worked with experts from the University of Melbourne, DEECA and MDBA to run these simulations.”

The study found that the beneficial environmental impacts of relaxing constraints in the mid-Murray and Goulburn tend to decrease with increasing distance downstream of the Barmah Choke, suggesting relaxing constraints will result in no change in the frequency of environmentally desirable higher flow rates in the Murray River at the South Australian border under all relaxed constraints scenarios tested. It also found that the geographical nature of the mid-Murray section and the Edward-Wakool section, where water needs to travel, the flat and wide landscapes means the peak of events is largely attenuated by the time it reaches Wakool Junction.

There are other major reasons why the 450GL cannot be delivered, and the flooding of the past decade demonstrates this. The 2016 floods gave clear evidence of the damage and impacts that would ensue if 80,000ML/day was to be delivered as part of the ‘relaxed’ constraints strategy.

As a result of major flooding in September/October 2016 in the Murrumbidgee, Murray and Mid Goulburn, flows to South Australia were of the volume, or in excess of the volume, being proposed by the MDBA under the Constraints Management Strategy, that is, in excess of 60,000ML/day for over 5 weeks at the border. Flows of 60,000ML/day over the South Australian border commenced on 11th November 2016, peaked at 94,246ML/day on 30th November and were then in excess of 65,000ML/day till 18th December 2016.

These flows still did not flood the downstream high-level floodplains listed as one of the “enhanced environmental outcomes,” however it did result in massive economic loss to landowners, towns, communities and food production.

In 2016, peak flood flows in the Murray River at Tocumwal, reached a huge 204,000ML/day, creating massive economic impacts and losses, yet with attenuation and evaporation as flows slowly wound their way seaward, less than 50 per cent actually reached the South Australian border.

The Murray Darling Basin Authority Constraints Modelling Review Report by NSW and Victorian Ministers’ Independent Expert Panel 2018 Wilson Report also highlighted the huge potential risks river operators could put on communities given the impacts of weather events, given that it takes one to two months for water to flow through the length of the Murray system.

Another tragedy in the plan to undermine our food security, and neuter the gravity-fed irrigation system our forebears developed, is that Watt appears to be focusing on the Southern Basin again. Over 70 per cent of the water removed from food production has come from the southern connected system.

Watt flagged that the government is “closely considering” purchasing water from the northern part of the basin, for the first time.

“Recent advice from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority highlights the potential benefits of pursuing water recovery in the northern basin to contribute towards the 450 gigalitre target.

“While this is not an adopted policy of our government right now, I will work closely with my department in considering this advice.”

Leader of the opposition, Sussan Ley, slammed the announced plans to nearly double the amount of water it will remove from the southern Murray Darling Basin, using water buybacks.

“When Labor first announced this policy last year, I described it as lazy, uncaring and taking enormous amounts of water for the environment, away from farming.

“22 months and a new Minister later, Labor is out of ideas, remaining content to divide up our farming communities, add to the nation’s debt level and put the skids on Australian produce.

“The 2023 deal between Labor and the Greens for an additional 450 GL environmental water allocation was supposed to be spread across a range of initiatives, including infrastructure projects, changes to water management, as well as state run partnerships.

“Minister Watt has not only doubled down on this buybacks plan, he won’t even take responsibility for it, indicating it was an idea from his Department. And all this before they even consider balancing out water recovery in the north of the Basin.”

Reviews, reports, studies, erosion, carp and social impacts are just fuel for the firebox on this train of destruction. Toot, toot!

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 20 November 2025.