2017 royal commission in South Australia as Murray Darling Basin Plan caught in federal-state political scrap
South Australian Labor premier Jay Weatherill and deputy prime minister and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce were prime protagonists in the war of words over the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
Images courtesy ABC News
South Australia’s Labor government, in its final months in late 2017, announced its own royal commission by Brett Walker SC into use of Murray-Darling Basin water. It was responding to allegations of water theft, aired on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Four Corners, and reports that New South Wales wasn’t complying with the 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
By June 2017, about 2,080 gigalitres (GL) had been recovered from federal government buybacks of river water licences and infrastructure boosts. This was well short of the 2012 plan’s aim for 2,750GL to be removed from irrigated agriculture plus 450GL for environmental flows to the Coorong and lower lakes at the Murray mouth in South Australia. Victoria and New South Wales backtracked on the commitment of 450GL even though prime minister Malcolm Turnbull supported it.
An Ernst & Young independent analysis, to break the stalemate, was presented to the basin state ministers in December 2017 but Victoria and New South Wales refused to commit to the report’s recommended efficiency measures. South Australia answered Victoria and New South Wales’s refusal to commit to the 450GL of water by withdrawing its support for the 605GL sustainable diversion limits sought by other states.
South Australian premier Jay Weatherill accused the federal government of walking away from the Murray-Darling Basin Plan by backing proposed cuts to water being returned to the environment. In September 2017, the state Labor government and Liberal opposition both supported a motion by the Greens party that the federal water and agriculture government portfolios be no longer merged as requested by National party leader Barnaby Joyce.
But, with the state election looming in 2018, the Labor government was accused increasingly of playing politics over the basin plan.
The royal commission by Walker was hamstrung by lack of federal government input and being unable to investigate matters relating only to other states. Walker’s report, handed down in 2019, contained “adverse assessments of many governmental decisions and processes” regarding the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
In final submissions to the royal commission, counsel assisting the inquiry, Richard Beasley, said maladministration of the Murray and the basin plan was having a negative impact on the environment and economies of the basin states: “But the state that will suffer the most is the state at the end of the system – South Australia.” The commission also was told the 450GL of extra environmental flows, secured largely through South Australia’s lobbying, were “highly unlikely to ever eventuate”.