The 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan is an environmental policy initiative designed to reduce the volume of water diversions to a sustainable level – the Sustainable Diversion Limit (SDL).  

Under the Basin Plan and earlier reforms since 2000,  more than 3000 billion litres, or 1 in every 3 litres of irrigation water, has been redirected to increase river flows. This means 72% of inflows into the Basin now remains in rivers and on floodplains, well within global sustainability standards.

The Basin Plan has already met its core objective, with diversions for towns, industry and growing food and fibre within sustainable diversions limits since they came into effect in 2019.

Water recovery to date has come at a cost: more than 3200 FTE jobs have been lost from small town economies, according to the Murray Darling Basin Authority. It has also driven the cost of water beyond what many farmers can afford to pay to grow food and fibre in dry years, according to ABARES.

The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH) is now the single largest water licence holder in the Basin, controlling more than 2885 billion litres. This additional water is delivering important localised benefits for native flora and fauna in many river reaches.

However, at a Basin-scale, native fish populations are still declining, waterbird populations are static and improved water quality remains elusive. This is because the Basin Plan has singularly focused only on a ‘’just add water’’ approach, without also investing in addressing major degradation drivers. Funding and action is desperately needed on:

• fish passageways and modern fish screens;
• invasive species such as European carp that make up nine out of ten fish in the rivers, wrecking water quality and native fish habitat; and,
• bank erosion and cold water pollution.

Instead, the Australian Government in late 2023 passed legislation to spend billions of dollars to unnecessarily recover another 450 billion litres from farmers for the environment. This will further hollow out small towns of jobs, population, income and family farms, and do little to improve environmental outcomes.