Windsor plan opens floodgates to waste

IF adopted, Tony Windsor's Murray Darling Basin plan could open the floodgates on a slush fund worth more than $5 billion to finance community pet projects.

For this reason alone, there is little wonder the plan has secured the unanimous and bipartisan support of the House of Representatives standing committee that created it.

The evidence is thin, however, that the plan will deliver a better overall outcome for the Murray Darling Basin system in terms of either environmental protection or community wellbeing.

The irony is the Windsor committee and its Labor members have endorsed the sort of direct action model for the Murray Darling Basin that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has been roundly criticised for advocating to deal with climate change.

The bottom line is that, faced with public demonstrations following the release of a poorly communicated interim plan, the ambitions of the Murray Darling rescue package have been scaled back and the process de-fanged in the name of political comfort.

There may well be many worthwhile capital projects that will deliver water back to the Murray Darling system.

These include public infrastructure, better on-farm reticulation and tougher environmental performance assessment.

But, as the Productivity Commission has already highlighted, direct investment is much more expensive than water buy-backs for the same result - estimates vary between four and 10 times.

They also create conflicts between what should rightly be public- and private-sector obligations.

A system based on valuing water entitlements through a voluntary tender process deepens the operation of the water market and improves overall system efficiency.

An ad-hoc community approach is open to pork-barrelling and is not necessarily more strategic than a buy-back regime.

It is true the government has not always got value for money from its water buy-backs. But this does not mean a market-based process is not the best option.

The Windsor committee has taken the easy route. It will add more process and financial waste when the answer lies in less bureaucracy, less duplication and real leadership.