ODM Daily Inspirational Devotional Messages Bible Verse and Prayers ODM
Murray-Darling Basin: A New Book Argues Engineering, Not Buybacks, Is the Way Forward
Australia’s largest river system is back in the political spotlight. Both the Water Act 2007 and the Basin Plan built on it are now under separate reviews, and a new book, Caught in the Current, argues that the whole framework needs to be rewritten. Patrick Byrne, writing in News Weekly and republished by The Daily Declaration, sets out the book’s case.
The Food Security Worry
The starting point is food. According to the book, the country’s population has grown much faster than its agricultural output over the past three decades. Byrne notes that Nationals Leader Matt Canavan and One Nation’s new member for Farrer, David Farley, have both warned that Australia could soon become a net food importer.
The book’s analysis, together with figures from the National Irrigators Council, suggests that around 40 per cent of the water once available for irrigation has been bought back by governments, mostly the Commonwealth. Byrne says these purchases have been used for “additional” environmental flows on top of the half of average flows already going to the environment before the Act. He reports that the real value of Basin irrigation production per head of population fell 29 per cent in the six years to 2020-21, and he stresses that an irrigated Basin farm produces about 42 times as much as the average Australian farm.
Are the Environmental Flows Working?
The Act justifies the buybacks partly by the need to keep the Murray Mouth open and flush the Coorong Lagoon. The book argues the extra water isn’t achieving either: it says the flows don’t keep the mouth open and bypass the Coorong on the way to the sea. It also questions the policy of keeping the Lower Lakes fresh for migratory birds, saying most of those species feed on estuarine or saltwater flats, not freshwater lakes.
The Book’s Six Proposals
- Rewrite the law. Change the Water Act so Lakes Alexandrina and Albert can return to their natural estuarine state.
- Build new engineering works. These include Lock Zero near the end of the Murray, automated lifting gates on the Lake Alexandrina barrages, and reconnecting some large south-east drainage channels to the Coorong. Supporters say this would keep the Murray Mouth open, protect the lakebeds from turning into acid sulphate soils and secure Adelaide’s fresh water supply.
- Build new dams. The last major dam in the Basin, Dartmouth, was finished in 1979. The book lists proposals to store more water in high-rainfall years and asks the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to release its study of 1960s storage options.
- Sell surplus water. If engineering fixes reduce the water needed downstream, selling some of it back to farmers, industry and cities could help pay for the new works.
- Restore cooperative management. The book wants to bring back the stakeholder-based system developed in the 1960s to tackle salinity, in place of a top-down Authority it says consults only in token fashion.
- Plan for the long term. Governments plan for health, transport, energy and education, the book says, and should do the same for water across cities, industry, farming and the environment.
The Other Side of the Debate
These are the book’s claims, and they are contested. Many hydrologists and environmental scientists argue that returning water to the river has improved wetland and river health, that the Coorong’s problems stem from multiple pressures, and that extra flows are needed as the climate changes. Critics of new dams point to their cost, evaporation losses and ecological impacts. And several of the figures above come from the book and industry analysis, so readers should compare them with Murray-Darling Basin Authority reporting and independent reviews before drawing conclusions.
With both the Act and the Plan under review, this argument is unlikely to go away soon.
Source: Patrick Byrne, “New Policies to Fix the Disastrous Murray-Darling Basin Plan,” The Daily Declaration, 29 September 2026, republished from News Weekly. This post is an independent summary and commentary. Read the original for the full article.
