The management and implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which seeks to restore and secure the health and sustainability of the basin, is a complex undertaking, involving a partnership between the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory Governments. Over the course of its work, the Select Committee on the Multijurisdictional Management and Execution of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan heard from many individuals and organisations located throughout the basin that the multijurisdictional nature of the plan can be a cause of unnecessary confusion and, at times, significant frustration.
However, evidence to the committee clearly established that the Basin Plan remains the best framework for improving and protecting the river system. To secure the future of the basin, it is important that basin governments continue and where appropriate expand efforts to deliver the Basin Plan. The guiding objective of this committee has been identifying ways in which the multijurisdictional management and implementation of the Basin Plan might be improved–and with it the delivery of better social, economic, environmental and cultural outcomes–and indeed that is the underlying and common purpose of the recommendations made in this report.
Several of the committee’s recommendations are aimed at streamlining and better communicating the division of jurisdictional responsibilities in relation to the Basin Plan. To address what many inquiry participants suggested was a complicated maze of multijurisdictional and multiagency bureaucracy in relation to the plan, one of the committee’s recommendations is that the Commonwealth and basin states should create, maintain and make easily accessible a detailed, comprehensive, clearly set-out and collectively-owned roadmap of the Murray-Darling Basin’s governance framework which clarifies decision-making and accountability between levels of governments and agencies for each aspect of the Basin Plan.
The committee also identified a need to improve transparency in relation to the management and implementation of the Basin Plan. Improved transparency is especially important given the complexity of the legislative, policy and institutional landscape that exists in relation to the management of the basin and its resources. One concern raised during the inquiry was whether government water accounts fully reflect the reality of water in the landscape, particularly given the distribution of information across jurisdictions, and potential inconsistencies in accounting methods and modelling by each jurisdiction. To this end, the committee recommends commissioning an independent audit of the underlying systems and processes of governments’ water accounts to provide a basin-wide perspective. This will improve community confidence in the basin’s management and assist to inform government decision-making.
In recent years, there has been a concerted push by basin governments, with support from the Commonwealth, to strengthen compliance in relation to water use, thereby providing stakeholders with confidence in compliance arrangements across various jurisdictions and in the integrity of the plan overall. Significant steps have been taken by basin governments to strengthen their metering, monitoring and penalty regimes. Since the commencement of this inquiry, the regulatory role of Inspector-General for Water Compliance has also been established. The committee commends these efforts. While the committee would not support a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to compliance across jurisdictions, to build on progress made to date the committee considers there would be merit in the development of best-practice principles to better align the compliance and enforcement approaches of basin governments. To help build cross-border confidence in the implementation of the Basin Plan, the committee also makes a recommendation that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Inspector-General of Water Compliance work with basin states to clarify the division of compliance roles and responsibilities between Commonwealth and state governments and their agencies, and the Inspector-General’s role in resolving multijurisdictional issues.
The committee has also made recommendations to improve transparency and communications in relation to environmental watering arrangements in the basin, and to do so in a way that better reflects the multijurisdictional institutional framework and division of roles under the Basin Plan. To the extent that duplications or inefficiencies between Commonwealth and state environmental watering plans exists, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office should work with state counterparts to correct this. To improve transparency and accountability, the committee also makes recommendations directed toward improving communications in relation to environmental watering decisions, and ensuring the evaluation mechanisms that apply to those decisions are appropriate and accessible.
The committee has also made a series of recommendations directed toward improving engagement and communication with key stakeholders, including Indigenous communities, in the management and implementation of various elements of the plan. With regard to Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment Mechanism Projects, the committee heard various concerns regarding the adequacy and consistency of community consultation. To address these concerns, the committee considers there would be value in developing best-practice community consultation guidelines in relation to the consideration of projects.
Finally, the committee makes several recommendations which seek to ensure a forward-looking, innovative and strategic approach to managing the basin, now and into the future. First, the committee recommends that parties to the Basin Plan review whether current research initiatives across governments and the private sector provide a coordinated, whole-of-basin, and long-term approach to overcoming current and future major water-related challenges in the basin. Second, the committee recommends that the Australian Government investigate investing in innovative measurement tools and infrastructure to enhance water conservation capacity in the basin.
Inquiry into Constitution Alteration (Water Resources) 2019
As part of its work, and as discussed in chapter two of this report, the committee inquired into the Constitutional Alteration (Water Resources) 2019 (‘the bill’). This private member’s bill would put the following question to the Australian people via a referendum process: Whether the Constitution should be amended to give the Australian Parliament the power to make laws in relation to the use and management of water resources that extend beyond the limits of a state. While frustrations with the multijurisdictional aspect of the management and execution of the Basin Plan (frustrations which become particularly apparent in times of very low inflows) are in many ways understandable, it is not clear that the Commonwealth is better placed than the states to manage the basin. On the contrary, there is good evidence to suggest that states are better attuned to local needs on the ground, while the Commonwealth is best placed to coordinate and oversight the implementation of the plan. As noted above, there are areas where the division of roles and responsibilities in relation to the plan could be made more effective and efficient. Nonetheless, the multijurisdictional aspect of the plan, rather than being an inherent impediment to its management and execution, is in critical respects a source of efficiency and balance, particularly given the vast diversity in hydrological and environmental conditions across the basin, and the equally diverse needs and interests of water users in different regions.
In considering the bill, the committee concluded that providing the Commonwealth with the power to make laws in relation to the use and management of water resources that extend beyond the limits of a state would not address the concerns raised throughout this inquiry.