PRESIDENT'S Column

By Gary Sansom

President

14 Jan 2010 Poor progress with the preparation of the Murray Darling Basin Plan

The future of the irrigation industry in the Murray Darling Basin under the Basin plan remain in question. Mike Taylor, Chairman of the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA), has made it clear in a statement reported in the Australian Financial Review this week, that the Authority is bound by the Commonwealth Water Act to give priority to the environmental health of rivers before the interests of irrigators. He was responding to ongoing concerns from irrigators about their livelihoods and environmentalists about the health of the river system under the Basin plan to be released in the middle of this year.

Queensland Farmers’ Federation (QFF) is well aware of the constraints in the Water Act which gives priority to environmental issues. QFF submissions during the drafting of the Act in 2007 were very critical that the draft legislation failed to require that the Basin Plan specifically address the enhancement of economic and social development opportunities of local Basin communities. The requirements for the preparation of the Basin Plan in the Water Act do not provide for necessary management objectives, outcomes and monitoring programs for the Basins economic and social assets compared with the detail in respect of the Basin’s environmental assets.

The Murray Darling Basin Authority conducted a two-day forum in mid-December for representatives of peak organisations to consider how sustainable diversion limits (SDLs) will be assessed in the preparation of the Basin Plan. Sustainable diversion limits are enforceable limits on the quantities of surface water and groundwater that can be taken from Basin catchments for use by farmers, towns and industries to achieve key environmental outcomes in all parts of the Basin. QFF and irrigator representatives from the Queensland Murray Darling catchments at the forum again raised concerns about insufficient attention being given to seeking a balance between economic, social and environmental issues in the setting of SDLs.

A draft of the Plan is to be released in the middle of this year so at this late stage there is little time available to adequately address economic and social issues even if the Authority would change its approach. This places significant pressure on programs being implemented by the Commonwealth Government to recover water for the environment and to help irrigation communities to make better use of reduced entitlements either through the buyback of water entitlements or irrigation efficiency investments. The Productivity Commission has just released a draft report on the implementation of these programs. The Commission recognises the limitations placed on the Authority to address the tradeoffs between providing water for the environment and for consumptive water and raises a number of other concerns about the way the Commonwealth have implemented these water recovery programs.

Treatment of economic and social issues was not the only concerns arising from the December forum. QFF and other delegates from industry and the environment could not understand why the Authority could only provide very broad advice on how SDLs would be set. Delegates were looking for more advice on the practicalities of defining and applying these SDLs that should be available at this late stage of the preparation of the plan. This issue was compounded by the fact that the Authority was not yet able to table lists of environmental assets and functions that would be addressed in the Plan. The Forum recommended that independent experts be formally appointed to review the adequacy of the science on environmental issues to be used in the development of the plan.

There is a growing concern in irrigation communities across the Basin that the preparation of the Basin Plan is well behind to where it should be to allow adequate development and pre-plan consultation. QFF will find it difficult to provide constructive comment on the draft Plan once it is released if the planning process is rushed and as a result shifts critical issues to the states to address in preparing their catchment plans to be implemented by 2014. QFF and other stakeholders will have only February and March this year to have further contact with the Authority before consultations end to allow the final preparation of the plan. The Basin plan appears on the verge of being designed to fail if action is not taken immediately to engage the community in meaningful way. This is a critical issue, irrigators and their communities have their livelihoods on the line.

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