Blog | 23rd Jun, 2025

What does the federal election result mean for the Murray-Darling?

Australia’s biggest river system, the Murray-Darling Basin, is at a crisis point. Over the next three years, the key laws governing how water is shared – and how much is returned to wildlife and wetlands – will be reviewed. It represents a once-in-a-generation chance to set things right, but will the Albanese government rise to the challenge?

Dutton’s gamble

During the 2025 federal election, just one promise was made about Australia’s inland rivers: the Liberal Party vowed to ‘stop Labor’s water buybacks,’ scrapping the only reliable way of restoring flows in the Murray-Darling Basin. No more water for wetlands, fish, waterbirds or people who depend on healthy, living rivers. 

Dutton’s promise wasn’t just reckless, it was nihilistic. In the lower Darling-Baaka, scientists are struggling to find a single adult Murray cod. Across the Basin, waterbird populations have collapsed by 90% over a generation. A Dutton government would have locked in this decline by halting any further water purchases for the environment.  

But Australia voted, and Labor won another term in government. This is a reprieve for our rivers, but now we must look for a bigger and more ambitious vision that actually restores the system to health.

Across the Basin, waterbird populations have collapsed by 90% over a generation. This decline is linked to the loss of wetlands and reduced water availability, which impacts their breeding and feeding grounds. Photo credit: Doug Gimesy

Why Albanese needs to go much further

Albanese didn’t run an election campaign on ambitious reform, but on assurance of stability. Against Dutton’s promise of chaotic ecological decline, he offered a steady holding pattern. 

Still, there was undeniable progress for rivers in Labor’s first term. In 2023, Labor passed the Restoring Our Rivers Act, finally enabling the government to purchase 450 billion litres (GL) – nearly a Sydney Harbour’s worth – for the environment. So far, 132 GL has been recovered with plans to reach nearly 300 GL by next year. Compared to the Coalition, which set aside just 2.6 GL over ten years, this is a meaningful shift. 

But around 60% of this water involves creative accounting, revaluing water purchases made years ago. Much of the rest is planned to come from water-saving infrastructure upgrades. These subsidies disproportionately flow to large agribusinesses. Over $4 billion has been handed out with little evidence of water savings.   

Labor is moving, but also manoeuvring, playing games like those that defined the Coalition years.

Meanwhile, the Basin itself is changing. These programs were meant to add new pulses to rivers. But in a hotter, drier climate, they’re increasingly replacing vanished flows. Red gum forests that once flooded every three years have gone without. Black box woodlands needing water every three to seven years are dying. 

The Basin Plan was a compromise even back in 2012. In 2025, it’s not nearly enough. Even without El Niño, multiple states are facing one of the worst droughts on record. Today, the Plan is a stopgap measure in a moment demanding bold action.

Challenges confronting the new Water Minister

During the election, we worked with our partners in the Murray-Darling Conservation Alliance to keep rivers on the agenda. We focused our collective efforts on two marginal Adelaide seats, we ran events, media campaigns, billboards and front-page ads. Labor made no promises – but we built a foundation for this next term. 

Murray Watt has taken over the water portfolio from Tanya Plibersek. He’ll oversee the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s review of the Plan and an independent review of the Water Act. This is a rare moment of possibility.  

But this moment demands more than technical updates and safe, stable delivery of outdated goals. It means confronting the unpredictability of climate collapse rather than the false comfort of models. It means recognising that First Nations peoples need not just consultation, but sovereignty over water.  

These ambitions have long been undermined. Since its inception, the Basin Plan has been made the scapegoat for challenges rooted in decades of economic reform. Hawke-Keating neoliberal policies exposed farmers to global price swings. Under Howard, water became a commodity, inviting speculators and rentier investors to flood in – profiting without producing. 

Farmers now pay more for inputs like fertiliser, labour and machinery, but earn less from buyers. They face tight margins while the supermarket duopoly makes record profits. Export-driven almond expansion has increased water prices by boosting demand, exacerbating supply shortages caused by a hotter, drier climate. Any margin left is targeted by institutional investors – hoarding water and selling it back to farmers at the highest price they can. 

The Coalition happily blamed these pressures on the Basin Plan. It was an easy excuse to do nothing for rivers and a distraction from the transfer of rural land and the $26 billion water market increasingly flowing to corporate mates. Labor hasn’t engaged in the spin, but the party significantly shaped this system.

Our vision

What’s needed now is a renewed Basin Plan, fit for an era of cascading ecological crises. But this also demands a reckoning with economic crises. The Basin Plan is meant to treat a specific ecological problem, not the whole system. It can’t fix years of profiteering and spin that have undermined river restoration efforts. But it can’t progress if the bigger picture is ignored.

In the fight to revive the rivers of the Basin, the years ahead are critical. In the short term, we’ll push governments to get on with the job: letting more water flow to support wetlands, wildlife and communities. In the medium term, we need to expand the scope for a renewed Basin Plan to meet this moment. 

That means centring a vision of living rivers and water justice. It means working with farmers, fishers and First Nations peoples to build a united voice for real solutions. We need bold policy that is ready to confront difficult challenges. 

If the 2025 election was a choice between chaos and courtesy, that’s not good enough. We need rivers that flow, not for profit, but for a good life. Rivers that can support us through a destabilised, chaotic climate.

Gunbower forest wetlands. Photo credit: Damien Cook, Wetland Revival Trust

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