Murray-Darling Basin royal commission slams river regulator’s ‘mismanagement’

The denial comes in the wake of the Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, which this week handed down a scathing 756-page assessment of the way the region’s water was carved up under the Basin Plan, a multibillion-dollar deal that was meant to save it.

The findings accuse the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA), the group set up to manage the Murray-Darling Basin, of engaging in gross maladministration, negligence and unlawful actions in its handling of water flows in the region. It also alleged the authority put commercial considerations ahead of scientific advice to carve up the water.

The report’s timing could not be worse, with reports of a third confirmed mass fish kill surfacing this week despite efforts – including aerators introduced to key parts of the Darling River in western NSW – to prevent it happening again.

Commissioner Bret Walker said although the Basin Plan enacted six years ago to manage the waterway was a “grand vision”, the way that the MDBA interpreted how the water would be carved up between irrigators and the environment “leaves a decidedly sour taste”.

In a statement released yesterday, the MDBA said it was “confident that the Basin Plan has been made lawfully and is based on best available science.

“There is extensive documentation in our published reports to support this,” it said. “The MDBA rejects any assertion by the commission that it has acted improperly or unlawfully in any way.”

The Victorian Government, meanwhile, said it stood by the Basin Plan, and did not support the commission’s recommendation that the various state governments contributing to the plan would need to launch fresh talks into how much of the system’s water should be preserved for environmental flows.

“Victoria is on track to meet its obligations under the Basin Plan, already delivering or contracted to deliver, 800 GL for recovery out of the state’s 1075 gigalitre target to improve the health of rivers and land in the basin,” a statement from the state’s Water Minister, Lisa Neville, said.

“If a much larger recovery target was implemented, many towns in Victoria would be under grave threat.”

“The royal commission was set up to examine water theft but has instead decided to unpick the Murray-Darling Basin Plan itself,” Neville said.

“Any suggestion of starting again or significantly increasing the targets would be a disaster for the environment and jeopardise progress made so far.”

“All basin states need to move forward in implementing the Basin Plan, providing communities with confidence that the balanced social, economic and environmental outcomes of the plan can be achieved,” she said.

Among the royal commission’s 44 recommendations coming out of 111 findings was the realisation that the Basin Plan failed to account for a “significant if not catastrophic” reduction in run-off due to climate change.

More than a million fish are believed to have died in the Darling River since late last year in the wake of low environmental flows that reduced the river to a string of stagnant pools.