Restoring the basin to health requires more than just more water. Coordinated local efforts to restore rivers and the surrounding land are desperately needed.
Articles on Murray Darling Basin Plan
Displaying 1 - 20 of 39 articles
Less rain will fall in the Darling River catchment as climate change worsens. This fact must be central to decisions about how much water can be taken from the system.
With the support of the Greens, there’s a chance the ‘Restoring Our Rivers’ Bill will pass. Will it be enough to put the Murray-Darling Basin Plan back on track?
Buying back water from irrigators across the Murray-Darling Basin will not be enough to restore river health because we have big problems getting this ‘environmental water’ to where it’s needed most.
Infrastructure is always a vexed issue. The program is full of pork barrelling, whoever is in power. Even when that’s not involved, what to build and when it should be built is often contested.
Once again, First Nations in the Murray-Darling Basin have been shortchanged in water reform and shortchanged in the water market. It’s time to listen and actually deliver tangible outcomes.
Knowing the ‘next drought is just around the corner’, Australia’s Water Minister Tanya Plibersek is striking a new agreement to return water and health to the Murray-Darling Basin.
Projects have not been delivered. States are bickering. If the Albanese government is to uphold its election promise to deliver the Murray plan, hard tradeoffs are needed.
Australia’s beloved billabongs and waterholes are in danger of filling up with eroded soil from farms, leaving little room for the aquatic animals that depend on these vital drought refuges.
Victoria is planning to engineer wetlands so more water can go to agriculture. It’s not a good plan.
In our land of drought and flooding rains, better water management should feature in every federal budget. The new budget delivers it – but not everyone is happy.
Federal Labor has pledged to deliver the Murray Darling Basin Plan. But a new report casts serious doubt on that promise.
A major new report from the Productivity Commission calls for an overhaul of Australia’s 17-year-old policy on water.
The government has chosen a route not backed by evidence, and which will deliver a bad deal to taxpayers and the environment.
China believed the Murray Darling Basin Plan was about more than the environment. It wanted to know how much more.
Thirty years since Australia’s water reform project began, it’s clear our efforts have largely failed. We must find another way.
The review examined hundreds of studies and concluded the lower Murray should remain a freshwater ecosystem, or severe environmental and economic damage will result.
There’s little transparency or clarity about how much water states are allocated. This failure in communication and leadership across such a vital system must change.
Knee-jerk responses to water insecurity won’t fix the basin. The harder and longer path is delivering real water reform, including transparent water planning enshrined in law.
Keith Pitt on the Murray-Darling Basin, the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, and Nuclear Power in Australia
Keith Pitt, minister for resources, water, and Northern Australia, discusses the NAIF, climate policy, nuclear energy, and the Murray-Darling Basin scheme with Michelle Grattan.
Top contributors
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Australian Laureate Professor of Economics, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
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Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University
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Executive Director and Professor of Fisheries and River Management, Gulbali Institute (Agriculture, Water and Environment), Charles Sturt University, Charles Sturt University
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Honorary Senior Lecturer, Australian National University
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Research Fellow, Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne
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Adjunct Professor, Charles Sturt University
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Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland
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Professor of Freshwater Ecology and Director of the Centre for Freshwater Ecosystems, La Trobe University
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Matthew Flinders Professor in Water Economics, Flinders University
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Professor, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW
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Adjunct Professor Environment and Natural Resources, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
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Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
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Director, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists & Adjunct Lecturer, UNSW
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Research Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
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CEO One Basin CRC, The University of Melbourne