Written by: Mel Gray, NCC Inland Rivers Campaigner 

As we head into a challenging time in the Northern Basin with drought and another El Nino looming, it’s Basin Plan Review time.

Submissions close Friday 1st May - links to submission guides are below.

This is our long-awaited chance to correct the fatal flaws of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan that were made back in 2012 following furious irrigator backlash and the public burning of the Plan.  

We water advocates (there are many of us) have been anticipating this review for years. This is our chance to fix these fatal flaws for the next decade of the plan: 

• The rivers need more water. The science and the law are indisputable - Remember the South Australian Royal Commission?  

• Climate change wasn’t considered back in 2012. Climate change is well and truly right here right now 

• First Nations interests are barely regarded in the Basin Plan, and no water has been returned to Traditional Owners 

• Rivers are pumped dry so they can’t connect to each other. Floodplains are blockaded with levees catching fresh rain and floodwaters 

• Native fish and birds are quickly becoming extinct  

• Wetlands are on life support with a limited life expectancy  

• People have no safe water  

My name is Mel Gray, a white Aussie born to farmers on Gumbaynggirr/Bundjalung Country, now living and working in Tubba-Gah maing Wiradjuri Country. I got into water advocacy to tell the truth about what is happening to our incredible inland rivers. That’s my only motivation.  

In 2017 I put my hand up for the Australian Conservation Foundation River Fellowship and have been campaigning for rivers ever since, five years as a self-funded community volunteer, and four years in a job at the Nature Conservation Council NSW. I fight for rivers all my working days. 

The Basin Plan consultation period has been in full swing since February. We’ve had trips to Sydney and Brisbane, lots of webinars and meetings and briefings. I’ve heard clear, strong, compelling scientifically sound evidence given from experts, ecotourism groups, recreational fishers, local councillors and healthcare professionals about how rivers and wetlands in the Basin are dying.  

I think to myself, globally we are lucky. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is world leading cross-borders water policy in a world has officially been declared water bankrupt– but unless the Plan is implemented as it was intended, we’re in real strife.  

We are all in trouble very soon if we don’t stop destroying our rivers. 

People instinctively know that. I know communities will fight for their rivers. They will show up in numbers when it matters.  

We have the smartest minds. I've met formidably intelligent Traditional Owners, scientists and experts, all with a relentless determination not to give up on our rivers.  

We know how to fix the rivers, and it wouldn’t take much.  

• Let the water get up on the low floodplain to the wetlands. The wetlands were there first.  

• Leave enough water in the rivers and let them connect to each other. Water must flow.  

Concerningly, however, the only noise the Authority is attuned to is that of industry. 

I’ve been in rooms and zooms with emotionally unregulated irrigators throwing bullying tantrums, attempting to dominate the space to the exclusion of all others, and change the record of the meeting — all as senior Authority staff let it go on.  

For years there’s been an aggressive anti-environmental water campaign coming out of the irrigation corner. Calls for the river’s own water to be ‘metered’ in the same way as irrigation water that is pumped out of the river seem too stupid to take notice of. It is working for them though!  

Throwing tantrums and whining is how you get policy shaped your way in the Basin.  

The irrigation industry rhetoric we keep hearing sounded out of date in the 1950s. The biggest threat irrigators throw around is wanting financial compensation for any loss of water access. Aboriginal People and the environment are still waiting for compensation last time I checked. 

We’re so close to leading the world out of water bankruptcy.  We could do it too. Please make a submission in support of our inland rivers. The rivers need your voice now. 

Key Links: 

• Inland Rivers Network have been around since the early 1990s – their website is an important library of detailed submissions and reports. Here is their recent newsletter with information about the review.

• Click here to send a very simple ‘click and send’ high level message of river support – please personalise your submission

• To write a submission with a bit more detail, here is a submission guide from the Murray-Darling Conservation Alliance. The Alliance has published some explainers here. Email your submission to [email protected] 
• The Environmental Defenders Office have developed a submission guide with an eye to the contents of the Water Act and the Basin Plan – details missing from the Basin Authorities ‘Discussion Paper’. Email your submission to [email protected]