Hot topics                    

Thursday 3 July 2008 (Updated at 6.30pm AEST)

RAPID ROUNDUP: COAG Murray Darling Basin water plan - Experts respond

At today’s COAG meeting the federal government, the states and territories have signed an intergovernmental agreement on the Murray-Darling Basin. The Federal Government has also committed a further 3.7 billion dollars to fund federal projects aimed at improving water infrastructure throughout the Murray-Darling system.

To read the full communique, click here.

The AusSMC is collating comments from water policy experts around the country. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Further comments will also be posted here as they are received. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 8207 7415 or by email.

Ian Atkinson is the Chief Executive Officer of the CRC for Irrigation Futures.

"We have just 10 short years to double water use productivity in the Murray-Darling Basin to ensure the viability of local communities. Such a dramatic improvement will only happen through a combination of financial incentives, sensitive regulation and changes in people’s behaviour. This COAG announcement clearly addresses the first two but seems to miss the mark on the human element. Improvements in infrastructure must be matched by improvements in skills and changes in attitude or we won’t achieve sustainable irrigation communities."

Wayne Meyer is Professor of Natural Resource Management at the University of Adelaide.

"A quick scan of the water part of the communiqué indicates that the governments still have not grasped the urgency or the magnitude of the problem with water in south eastern Australia. There appears to be nothing that indicates a leadership role from the Federal Government to direct some stored water from the Darling as an emergency into the lower Murray reaches.

The measures announced have the flavour that substituting money for water will fix the problem. This will only ever be a partial, short term solution since river systems need water. The money to improve irrigation supply and irrigation application systems on farm is certainly welcome but unless these systems are designed to operate with 30 to 50% less extraction from the rivers we will end up with great irrigation infrastructure, an ongoing scrap over a diminishing supply of water and a degraded river system that no Australian will be proud of."

Professor Jennifer McKay is Director of the Centre for Comparative Water Policies and Laws at the University of South Australia.

"The COAG agreement signed today respresents an important institutional change over water management and as such needs some time to work out the rules. The Basin Plan has the potential to create harmonised water management systems and for the first time, engage in appropriate up stream and down stream issues relating to best and sustainable water use. The science exists to suggest dire ecological circumstances with existing practices but now one central authority will be able to guide and amass the scientific evidence, to create good policy that questions the appropriateness of land use activities in certian places and that includes the locations of cities and water hungry industries. The only probelm with it is that it does not cover the entire country."

Peter Cosier is Director of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and is an environmental policy specialist.

“Today's COAG was a test as to whether our federation was capable of managing Australia’s water resources. We failed the test. What we’ve seen today is an agreement to produce yet another plan. An announcement of a few billion dollars worth of projects but they are in principle agreements and they are 'subject to due diligence' which is bureaucratic code for they’ve presented a list of projects which will be looked at.

There was an expectation before this agreement that we would get substantial acceleration of the purchase of environmental water and that hasn’t happened. I think they’ve missed an opportunity to do something significant for the river system and they’ve balked at that opportunity.”

Professor Mike Young is Research Chair, Water Economics and Management at the University of Adelaide

“It is important that COAG has agreed to appoint an independent Authority but disappointing that it remains a planning rather than a managing authority empowered to act quickly.”

Adjunct Professor David Mitchell is an internationally respected wetland ecologist from the Institute of Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University, NSW

“I am impressed by the detail of much of the planning that contributed to the decisions taken at this COAG meeting. However, I am seriously concerned that little, if any, attention is being paid to the reality that all the data available about the supplies of water, on which these arrangements depend for their efficacy, reveals their exceptional variability. It is essential to plan for effective responses to periods of exceptional drought and periods of widespread floods as well the conditions in between. This will involve social, economic and environmental issues. There is too little attention to the last of these which is foundational to the other two. COAG needs to minimise the frequency of 'crisis management' by improving basic understanding of the water cycles occurring in the Murray-Darling Basin as a whole.”

Dr Rodney Keenan is Head of the School of Forest and Ecosystem Science at the University of Melbourne.

“I welcome the commitment to stronger cooperative governance model for the Murray Darling Basin. I would have liked to see a more explicit commitment of water for environmental values and for restoration of the ecological health of forests along the Murray River."

Mark Siebentritt is Operations Manager for the national water brokers, Waterfind

“Waterfind would like to see the intergovernmental agreement include centralised registers or common trading platforms for interstate trading, simplification and reduction in the number of rules, further removal of barriers to trade and comprehensive regulation of the industry”

Professor Jörg Imberger, Centre for Water Research (CWR) at the University of Western Australia is also available for comment. Let us know if you need his contact details.