Passmore, Elizabeth --- "Water Politics in the Murray Darling, by Daniel Connell" [2007] ALRCRefJl 22; (2007) 91 Australian Law Reform Commission Reform Journal 69

• Water Politics in the Murray Darling

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Water Politics in the Murray Darling

The Murray Darling Basin, Australia’s major waterway, covers four states and is home to two million people. It includes 30,000 wetlands and generates approximately 40 percent of Australia’s agriculture and pastoral production.

It is not unusual, acknowledges Daniel Connell, to hear accounts of serious degradation of river systems, but the crisis in the Murray Darling Basin seems bleak indeed. The system is plagued by serious salinity problems. It experienced the world’s largest recorded toxic algal bloom in 1991-1992. It has been seriously stressed by diversions which have tripled in the last 50 years, to the extent that the Basin cannot now be maintained as a healthy ecological system. It is now severely modified and bears little resemblance to the river system first found by Europeans. Further, the long time lag in ecological impacts means that the full extent of the degradation caused by current extractions and human activity is not yet known.

Published in February, Connell’s book “Water Politics in the Murray Darling Basin” seeks to explain how a crisis looming so large for so long progressed inexorably despite all warnings. In part, Connell, an environmental historian, attributes this to the “boredom” associated with water management planning, which veils the fact that planning involves the exercise of real power. Principally, though, Connell points to the failures of the institutions historically responsible for managing the Basin and sets out to identify what is needed of institutional arrangements now, with particular reference to the Commonwealth Government’s plan to take over management of the Basin.

Connell illustrates with force the limited capacity if the Australian political system to address the biophysical realities of environmental problems. Managing environmental issues requires the will to implement radical policy changes where necessary rather than simply pursuing incremental and politically acceptable change.

Connell laments that, while the language of environmental sustainability has been used by managers in the Basin for some decades, this has not been backed up by effective action. Most recently, the National Water Initiative agreed upon at the June 2004 CoAG meeting, embodied the ‘radical’ approach that the environmental needs of rivers must be met before water is allocated for irrigation.

This, Connell argues, not been implemented in a meaningful way. This failure reflects the priorities of politicians who Connell accuses of “talking environment” but “dreaming production”. It is manifested in a research agenda driven by a definition of sustainability “built only around the relationship of a farmers and a bank manager”. “Almost no one”, Connell points out, “puts forward an explicit in-principle defence of unsustainable management but so many take this approach in practice.”

Connell explores the management of the Basin as a classic case study of federalism, with untidy compromises resulting from the necessity of central policy development on the one hand and the need to preserve state autonomy on the other. Tracing back to the 1870s, Connell charts the tensions between New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia over rights of irrigation and navigation. He also sets out the genesis of section 100 of the Constitution, which protects States’ rights to the reasonable use of river water for conservation or irrigation.

Connell explains that a century of reluctant co-operation between jurisdictions has had disastrous consequences. Until the 1980s the MDB was still being managed as three largely autonomous state regions, preventing integrated catchment management of the system as a whole. And the requirement for unanimous decisions in the Basin Ministerial Council has meant that little could be achieved other than simple tasks requiring minimum co-operation between States.

In designing institutional arrangements, Connell stresses the need to start from first principles, including the biophysical realities and basic questions such as: how can we preserve the Basin as a working hydrological system? How modified should we allow our river systems to become? What is the proper role of agriculture in Australia? If the answers to these questions require radical change, says Connell, so be it.

Connell argues that a full Commonwealth takeover is inappropriate since detailed supervision and local knowledge are required for effective natural resource management. He argues that it is necessary to draw on the EU principle of “subsidiarity”, devolving policy making so that States must retain an important role in any new institutional arrangement.

Published in February, Connell’s book unfortunately predates the Commonwealth Water Act 2007 which received assent in early September. The Act, relying on Constitutional powers in the absence of Victoria’s agreement to refer its powers, gives effect to the Government’s $10 billion water plan. It establishes a five-member Authority, provides for the development of a Basin-Wide Plan and the enforcement of a new sustainable cap on extractions. A role will be retained for States through State Water Resource plans, ccredited by the Commonwealth Authority. The Authority is nominally “independent” but would remain subject to directions from the Commonwealth Minister in most circumstances. This is a far cry from Connell’s suggestion that the governing body should be a public corporation with the same degree of independence as the Reserve Bank.

The capacity of the new arrangements to respond to the urgency, and the scientific realities, of the problems in the Basin remains to be seen. What is clear is that the nature of institutional arrangements is crucial and they must not be “forged amidst our inattention”, as Connell points out.

Elizabeth Passmore