A draft report by the Productivity Commission (PC) into the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has found there was still “a lot of hard work” ahead for Governments involved in the Basin with no guarantee their efforts would succeed.
In its report, Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Five-year Assessment, the PC sounds a warning bell to the Governments that some of the timelines in the plan were unrealistic.
The report makes a number of draft recommendations to rectify the situation.
Associate Productivity Commissioner for Water, John Madden said that by 2024, Governments were to deliver an ambitious suite of projects.
“If these succeed, they will deliver the same environmental outcomes with less water, easing the burden on farmers and Basin communities and saving taxpayers about $480 million,” Mr Madden said.
“In addition, the plan requires that an extra 450 GL (about 20 per cent more than water recovered to date) be acquired for the environment, so long as there are no negative socioeconomic impacts.”
He said that in addition to the unrealistic timelines, institutional and governance arrangements were deficient.
“The current institutional arrangements for implementing the plan do not give the Commission confidence that the significant risks ahead will be well managed,” Mr Madden said.
“Basin Governments need to collectively take charge and deliver on implementation of the plan for the benefit of the Basin as a whole, not just to their own patch,” he said.
“This needs to be accompanied by reform of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to create a separate Basin Plan Regulator.”
He encouraged interested parties to examine the draft report and make a submission or brief comment to the Productivity Commission by 10 October.
The Commission’s 347-page draft report can be accessed at this PS News link.
