RIVERS, wetlands and lakes are in far better shape under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, according to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority last week.
The MDBA released the 2025 Basin Plan Evaluation report last week, assessing the achievements and lessons learned from the 13 years of implementing Australia’s most significant water reform.
Chief executive Andrew McConville said that while implementation was not complete, the evidence suggests the “rivers, wetlands and lakes are in far better shape under the basin plan”.
“This evaluation provides strong evidence that the sustained commitment of basin communities, industry and governments to implement the basin plan is working,” Mr McConville said.
“This is the most comprehensive assessment of the progress made to restore and sustainably manage the Basin’s environment and water resources.
“We have drawn on more than 30 lines of evidence, including extensive environmental monitoring, lived experience, social and economic studies and technical information.
“Reflecting on the past 13 years, it’s important we acknowledge the challenges of basin plan implementation for industries and communities. This reform has not been easy.
“At a basin scale, there have been substantial benefits, but it is also the case that for some irrigation dependent communities, this reform has been tough with direct impacts.
“Collaborative efforts to manage environmental watering are getting results – keeping rivers in the north and south connected, restoring low-lying floodplain vegetation and helping water birds to breed in places like Hattah and Narran Lakes.
“In dry years, water for the environment was the only water sustaining flows through the Murray mouth.”
The evaluation identifies six key insights reflecting on achievements of environmental water, initial steps towards greater inclusion of First Nations peoples, and how the plan and future policy decisions may be improved and shaped.
However, the Victorian Farmers Federation said the evaluation ignored the “real-world reality” facing farmers and communities in the region.
VFF water council chair and Murrabit dairy farmer Andrew Leahy said the MDBA appeared more focused on defending its own plan than objectively evaluating the impacts.
“It’s incredibly disappointing that the MDBA seems to have written this report to justify the plan, rather than assess whether it’s actually working for regional communities,” he said.
“While the report declares, ‘We are better off with the basin plan’, and claims the basin’s environment ‘is better now than it would have been without the basin plan’, it does so by measuring ‘economic growth’ against a baseline year of 2007, in the middle of the devastating Millennium Drought
“2007 was one of the worst years in living memory for agriculture.
“Farmers were forced to sell water under financial pressure from banks and rising input costs. Using this year as a reference point for ‘economic improvement’ is misleading.
“Of course, there has been some rebound since then. The real question the report refuses to ask is what economic growth could we have achieved if the basin plan hadn’t stripped productive water from regional economies?”
Mr Leahy said the impacts in northern Victoria were “real”.
“Fewer farms means fewer jobs, fewer people in our schools, and fewer kids on the footy and netball teams,” he said.
“We’ve asked the Minister for the Environment and Water, Murray Watt, a number of times to come and see what it’s like on the ground. It’s time for him to take us up on that offer and see what it’s really like out here.”
Mr Watt said the findings showed the basin plan was “working”, but there was “more to do”.
“The hard work of communities, farmers and governments to restore water use in the basin to a sustainable level is paying off,” Mr Watt said.
“Both reports confirm significant progress has been made … the historic passage of the Restoring Our Rivers Act 2023 will ensure tangible outcomes are achieved after a decade of inaction.
“These reports give us further confirmation that we need to implement the basin plan as committed to in 2023, including recovery of water for the environment.”
