Tanya Plibersek has chance to right water wrongs after Water for the Environment Special Account report

The Coalition wasted a decade and millions of dollars on methods that have failed to get our rivers the water they need. Now, Water Minister Tanya Plibersek has the opportunity to get the Basin Plan back on track — and it starts with credible solutions like buying back water.

While releasing the State of the Environment report last week, Australia’s new Water Minister Tanya Plibersek said she was “gobsmacked” at the dismal progress in the Murray-Darling Basin.

She also noted it will be “next to impossible” to deliver on parts of the $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin plan.

Now the federal government has the opportunity to start repairing the Coalition’s damaging legacy with the release of a progress report on a key basin plan target.

The Water for the Environment Special Account report released this week funds some of the water that we must return to the river.

At the basin plan’s outset, it set a target of returning 3200 billion litres to the environment. That’s about six times the size of Sydney Harbour, but less than half of what the river needs for a good chance of survival. For all its flaws, it still set in motion the ambitious goal of setting aside enough water to keep the river alive.

But each piece of the plan has suffered from a punishing lobbying effort by powerful corporate interests. That 3200-billion-litre target was divided into different buckets. Some had convoluted mechanisms that allow nearly 20 per cent of the target to be offset, with ridiculous proposals to re-engineer wetlands to use less water.

After nearly a decade of the Coalition’s negligence, less than 1 per cent of a key 450-billion-litre bucket is full. The report looks at this missing water.

The report’s main finding is straightforward: it is not possible to reach the 450GL target through the current programs. Tanya Plibersek has said that filling this bucket is “next to impossible given where we are starting from and how far behind we are.” But why has it been so hard? To understand this, it’s useful to explain the ways we can fill the bucket – returning water to rivers.

Governments could return water through compulsory acquisition, changing water rights and licences so less water can be taken. This option hasn’t been on the table in years.

Another option is to purchase water rights directly from willing sellers. This has been the most cost-effective means used so far. And irrigators have been eager to sell – every purchase tender has been oversubscribed. Most irrigators sold only some of their water, continuing to farm, funding other parts of their business, and returning much-needed water to the river.

But why has less than 1 per cent of this basin plan target has been achieved? To put it simply, it’s because the previous government ruled out every method to fill the bucket – except infrastructure upgrades.

This is the final way to find water toward the target: by modernising irrigation infrastructure through handouts that are anywhere from 3 to 25 times more expensive than open-tender purchases. These projects were favoured by corporate irrigators and their lobbyists – no doubt because corporate agribusinesses have been 21 times more likely to receive the funding than family farms.

With this in mind, the report’s conclusion isn’t surprising. It’s next to impossible to meet basin plan targets if we rely on the methods that have failed us the past decade. But it’s achievable if we spend smarter and use methods irrigators have taken advantage of: purchasing water at fair rates from willing sellers. The new government needs to chart a different course if we are going to save the Murray-Darling.

The minister has an opportunity here. Water storages are brimming across the Basin, but that water isn’t flowing into the wetlands, anabranches, billabongs and backwaters. There is a massive problem of water management and distribution. And while the biggest corporate irrigators keep reaping the benefits, the rivers will continue to decline in health.

It’s time for the newly elected Labor government to step up, utilising some of the same tools that have worked before. Buying water from willing sellers is a win-win both for irrigators living on the river and for the places we love that will get a bit more water, helping all the birds, fish and turtles that depend on it.

This article was originally published by Australian Community Media. Read the article here >>

Header image: John Morton. Available on Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0 licence.