During his recent visit to Southern NSW the new Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) chairman, Sir Angus Houston, blamed legislation for the MDBA’s inaction.
While I agree with many others that the commitment by Sir Angus to improve communication and transparency is welcomed, I don’t believe the MDBA should be allowed to hide behind ‘legislation’.
As an independent body it should be calling out the faults in the basin plan and recommending changes to governments at State and Federal level. This refusal to identify basin plan failings and seek solutions is a blight on the MDBA’s performance and should be acknowledged and highlighted by Sir Angus.
For example, why wouldn’t the MDBA make it widely known that we are causing untold damage to the Murray River due to the need to send so much water downstream, especially for large nut developments and to keep the Lower Lakes as a freshwater system?
Why wouldn’t it recommend solutions, such as the construction of Lock Zero and for work around the South Australian South-East drains to ease these upstream pressures?
Instead, the MDBA allows river bank damage to continue unabated, oversees untold damage to sensitive ecological areas such as the Barmah Choke, does nothing to stop the damage caused by overwatering redgum forests, and doesn’t call out the issues around carp breeding explosions.
If Sir Angus is serious about repairing the basin plan, he needs to insist that the MDBA starts acknowledging its many negative impacts, so we can look at spending the remainder of the plan’s multi-billion funding on effective solutions.
During the recent MDBA tour, even its chief executive officer, Phillip Glyde, admitted that with what we now know, the Basin Plan would look ‘very different’. So why can’t he publicly tell us how it should look and convince governments to make the necessary changes to deliver the ‘triple bottom line’ that we were all promised.
As we try to rebuild Australia’s prosperity, the food and fibre producers of our region could make a significant contribution, however this is presently being hampered by poor water management and the inability of the MDBA and governments to deliver the changes we need.
Russell Crichton
Cohuna
