How to fix eroding Murray-Darling Basin accountability

Cobram Estate boss Rob McGavin has offered a solution for how Murray-Darling Basin water policy should be managed. See the latest.

A shift in policymaking power from ministers to bureaucrats is eroding Murray-Darling Basin accountability, the chief of Cobram Estate says.

Rob McGavin joined Victorian National Party leader Peter Walsh, LAWD senior director Danny Thomas and Aither director Chris Olszak at an Agribusiness Australia forum on Thursday night.

The forum came just weeks after the first water buybacks under the Albanese government were confirmed at a cost of $205 million for 26 gigalitres a year.

Cobram Estate founder Rob McGavin

The Cobram Estate Olives chairman told the Melbourne forum that no one person was accountable for billion-dollar decisions on the Murray-Darling, with a drift towards shifting decision making to departmental committees.

“Bring the power back to the politicians instead of the departments,” Mr McGavin said.

“It’s fairly serious that we have to build the equivalent of another Hume Dam just to fit that environmental water in, but there’s not the accountability of what’s best for the nation.”

Mr Walsh, who was Victoria’s agriculture minister between 2010 and 2014, said a trend had developed in recent years by federal and state governments to establish quasi-independent bodies as a way of dodging the tough decisions.

“We as ministers, under the Westminster system, should be accountable for everything in our portfolio,” the Murray Plains MP said.

“We should have the power to make decisions and if we stuff it up, you (the voters) kick us out — simple as that.”

Mr Olszak said the impact of a buyback program was contingent on its geographic focus.

“The phone’s not running hot with panic about a buyback. Most horticultural business, particularly below the choke in the Lower Murray, I can’t think of any that have a full coverage of entitlements that meet all of their water needs,” Mr Olszak said.

“Most of them are using a mix of entitlement ownership, leases, carry-over, buying on spot market.

“So most people are trying to develop water strategies to help deal with the capital efficiency equation, get the lowest cost of water, get the best returns and manage the risk of the drought year. People tackle that in different ways.

“(The impact of) a buyback program depends on where it happens — if it happens in the Lower Murray, it will add to the pressure in a drought year.”

On the subject of property prices, Mr Thomas said previous concern in 2023 over El Nino had abated, with prices per hectare robust as ever in 2024.

“If you believe the Bureau (of Meteorology), this was supposed to be drought by now,” he said. “If this is El Nino, I’ll have another one!

“With the exchange rate, for the international investment community, the basin and Australia generally is still a pretty good place to invest.”