South Australia is misusing the Murray River’s environmental flows

IT’S time to take management of the Lower Murray River out of the South Australian Government’s hands, says PETER HUNT.

Murray flows: Upstream irrigators should be alarmed the South Australian Government manages, monitors and delivers all information on the barrages holding the Lower Lakes back from the sea, as well as controlling river flows.

IT’S clear the South Australian Government and its water bureaucrats cannot be trusted to manage the passage of $3.2 billion in environmental flows down the Murray River to the sea.

Repeated audits and research reports show the South Australian Government is conflicted, putting the Lower Lakes’ recreational users ahead of environmental flows to the Coorong and Murray Mouth.

Victorian Farmers Federation water council chairman Richard Anderson put it more bluntly: “we’re leaving the fox in charge of the hen house”.

Upstream irrigators should be alarmed the South Australian Government manages, monitors and delivers all information on the barrages holding the Lower Lakes back from the sea, as well as controlling river flows.

That’s not what happens in Victoria and NSW, where the Murray Darling Basin Authority operates every Murray River storage, weir and flows.

Why then, do we just shove $3.2 billion of environmental water across the South Australian border and then wave goodbye, given it has come at such a high cost to southern NSW and northern Victoria irrigation communities?

Irrigators have lost 20 per cent of their consumptive pool to the environment, which has meant higher water prices, less milk, less rice and fewer jobs, both on and off the farm.

It’s not hard to imagine the anger of Riverina rice growers or Tatura dairy farmers to the news their communities’ water is being used to keep a Lower Lakes yachting regatta afloat or maintain the vista for holiday homes.

Southern basin irrigators deserve to know where every drop of the 1.5 million megalitres they have sacrificed to the environment goes, how it is managed and what it achieves.

ANALYSIS: SA RESPONSE ON FLOWS STILL CLEAR AS MUD

As it stands, South Australia refuses to deliver the transparency needed to achieve that goal.

The obvious solution is to extend the MDBA’s operational control past the South Australian border, right down to the Coorong and Murray Mouth.

This approach goes beyond last December’s Productivity Commission five-year assessment of the MDB Plan, which recommended splitting the MDBA, with one agency implementing the plan and another regulator evaluating and overseeing compliance.

But it’s doubtful such an approach would succeed, given we’ve already seen the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder try and fail to hold South Australia to account on water management. How can we hold South Australia to account when it manages the whole Lower Murray, holds all the data and refuses to effectively report back to the CEWH or anyone else on environmental outcomes?

Only an independent river operator, who regulates and measures the whole Murray River can deliver the transparency needed to trust the process.

● Peter Hunt is The Weekly Times senior reporter