Senate report says “deep suspicion” of MDBA

The Senate Select Committee inquiry into the Murray Darling Basin Plan – Chaired by NSW Liberal Democratic Party Senator David Leyonhjelm - tabled its report last week making 31 recommendations.

However, the disparity of the Committee process was reflected in the 184 page report containing four dissenting chapters from the ALP, Greens, Independent SA Senator Nick Xenophon and Victorian Independent Senator John Madigan.

Senator Madigan largely instigated the inquiry following a listening tour of Basin communities in early 2015 which revealed farming communities still held serious concerns about the loss of productive water and its impact on their futures.

His dissenting report slammed the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) saying “deep suspicion” remained across the Basin about its operations and the perceived “perfunctory nature” of attempts to liaise and listen to local communities.

“Communities exhausted by challenging economic conditions, with dwindling farming and irrigation sectors, remain convinced the MDBA is proceeding on its own agenda while paying 'lip service' to consultation,” he said.

“I note that in the 2011 House of Representatives Inquiry into the Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan, the committee was highly critical of the MDBA's community engagement program.

“During the current Senate inquiry I saw little perception from communities across the Basin that the operations of the MDBA had changed in response to the first report.

“I remain deeply concerned that the MDBA is a well-funded and diverse bureaucracy dedicated to its own self-preservation with little real accountability to the government or the Parliament, and certainly not to the thousands of rural and regional Australians who are impacted by its operations and decisions.”

Senator Madigan’s report made 19 recommendations including demanding an independent investigation of the MDBA’s accountability, performance and independence with emphasis on the “basis and validity” of its conclusions and recommendations to government in the Basin Plan’s development and implementation.

His leading recommendation called for the Commonwealth Water Act 2007 to be amended to “indisputably give equal balance to the triple bottom line i.e. social, economic and environmental values”.

His second recommendation said the Water Act 2007 must be amended to remove reference to the 450 gigalitres in additional environmental flows - on top of the Plan’s basic 2750GL target - and its links to the Sustainable Diversion Adjustment mechanism.

The main Committee report supported the Basin Plan’s overarching principles and acknowledged some elements of its implementation were producing and encouraging efficient water use and positive economic, social and environmental outcomes.

But the Committee said it was concerned to hear that several elements of the Basin Plan, and its implementation, were having negative impacts on Basin economies and communities.

“The committee considers the implementation of the Plan requires greater effort to minimise its negative impacts,” it said.

The Committee report’s recommendations focused on ways to improve the Plan and its implementation, including demanding no further water entitlement reductions occur until the Northern Basin review, and any subsequent assessments, have been completed.

It recommended the government direct the Productivity Commission to investigate the value of foregone production and food processing, due to reduced irrigation water under the Basin Plan.

But in a dissenting report, the Australian Greens said they had “serious concerns” about many recommendations in the Chair’s report and likely negative impacts on the Basin’s long term health and sustainability which would have “knock on effects” for environmental, social and economic elements.

It cited several examples of concern including Recommendation 19 which called on the government to have the Productivity Commission undertake a cost-benefit analysis of the Basin Plan.

The Greens said the Basin Plan was only finalised in November 2012 and with many outcomes still in the process of implementation, the PC conducting such a review would be costly, time consuming and “stymie the substantial progress” achieved over the last three years.

They did however offer provisional support for some recommendations including providing the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder greater capacity to conduct monitoring, objective evaluation and communication of environmental watering activities.

A dissenting report signed by ALP NSW Senator Jenny McAllister said the Opposition believed some valid concerns about the Basin Plan’s operation were raised in the evidence heard by the Committee and in the majority report itself.

But Senator McAllister said that evidence did not provide the scientific or technical basis for making highly specific recommendations that may disturb the Plan’s “stability and operation”.

“The Basin Plan operates as a whole - there are complex interlinkages between the different elements and there are significant risks in modifying particular elements of the Plan on an ad hoc basis in the absence of an overall strategic approach,” she said.

“Labor Senators have concerns that this inquiry has not put this Committee in a position to be able to avoid or minimise those risks.

“Accordingly, Labor Senators are not able to support the majority of recommendations set out in the majority report.”

Senator Xenophon’s dissenting chapter said the main report’s recommendations - that discussed moving barrages, allowing ingress of salt water into the lake and an additional lock above Lake Alexandrina - would have “disastrous environmental and socials consequences for the lower regions of the Murray”.

He said the Basin Plan must be subject to regular and robust scrutiny, but to undo it, as a number of the report’s recommendations suggest, “would be retrograde step; destructive to both the farmers and the environment”.

The Australian Conservation Foundation urged the federal government to ignore key recommendations in the report saying it promotes “thoroughly discredited, flat-earth theories about the River Murray that would fail high school science”.

“The government should consign this report to the bin where it belongs and get on with the job of delivering the Murray Darling Basin Plan, which is bringing health back to the rivers that underpin life throughout south-eastern Australia,” ACF Healthy Ecosystems campaign manager Jonathan La Nauze said.