Andrew McConville's address to Murray Darling Association annual conference 2024

Speech transcript at Murray Darling Association annual conference, 10 July 2024, Tamworth.

Hello everyone. It is a very great pleasure to be here again. I’m not quite sure about the speaking spot. If you come before lunch everyone is hangry. If you come after lunch, everyone is sleepy. We’ll see how we get on then.

It is a great pleasure to be back in New England. Many of you know I grew up just up the road in Armidale, spent some time jackerooing in Gunnedah and my eldest lad Gus is jackerooing just over the hill in Walcha. So New England, this part of the world, holds a very special place in my heart.

I hope that it helps me understand even just a little bit some of the challenges you face and some of the opportunities also.  

I would like acknowledge the Kamilaroi/Gomeroi people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and offer my respect to their Elders past and present and emerging.

I also acknowledge the 50 nations and traditional owners and custodians of the lands and waters of the Murray–Darling Basin and connection to the land dating back 65,000 years.  

I want to acknowledge our host Mayor Craig Davies, MDA National President. Craig has been a great source of advice and feedback to me since I started at the MDBA just over 2 years ago.

I obviously want to thank and welcome all of the mayors. I genuinely mean this – you have all been a fabulous help providing input into my role since I started just over 2 years ago. So, it has been 2 years and this is actually the third time I have spoken to you.  

Some of you may recall I keep a Basin map in my office and each time I visit somewhere new in the Basin I add a red dot. I’ve passed 80 dots. So, I hope I have some sort of feel now for what is going on in the Basin.

This year we are talking this year about water security and what can be more important than water security.  

For many people, water security and the health of the Basin are one and the same and certainly, the Basin plan plays a crucial role in ensuring water security in the Murray–Darling Basin.  

And without a healthy Basin, it is very difficult if not impossible to achieve a sustainable level of water security.

The Plan – hate it, want it – has been our ‘rule book’ to manage and maintain healthy rivers for all communities in the Basin over the last ten or twelve or so years.

And now we have the opportunity to build a better plan – and that is what I want to focus on today so that hopefully we can improve water security across the Basin and particularly in the face of a changing climate.  

At the MDBA we are working hard to transition from a much-needed intervention in response to over-extraction and a time of crisis during the Millennium drought to a more inclusive Basin plan.  

And I think in terms of local government being the level of government closest to people’s wants, needs and aspirations, the 77 governments in the Basin are crucial to helping the MDBA deliver a Basin Plan that I hope people can say is genuinely done with, and not done to, community. And is genuinely informed by the views of community.  

A year ago, I did say local councils join the dots between the Basin Plan, as written, and the real on ground experience as it is lived.  

It is absolutely not a “make work role” dreamed up to accommodate ambition for relevance beyond roads, rates and rubbish tips.  

It is a genuine and essential role you fulfil because Australians expect a great deal from their local councils…

They want you advocating for community needs, and listening to the conversation this morning I think anyone represented by you would be proud and pleased in how you are advocating and representing the needs of your communities for local values and making the calls to contribute to a healthier and fairer society.    

Today I have come to ask for your help that you lean in as we progress the Basin Plan Review, by the end of 2026, as you continue delivering strong, healthy, and resilient communities.

I really do want your help to build a better Basin Plan, because you are absolutely essential to the communities in the Basin and water is essential for the health of the Basin.  

I want to be upfront. The MDBA does not hold all the answers and I have worked hard in my role to try to shift the posture of the MDBA in terms of how we approach the task and shift we will search for them in the Basin Plan review by bringing people together to find the way ahead.  

But because the Basin Plan is not a perfect thing, most folk seem to spend their time criticizing it and the outcomes it has achieved so far are often overlooked.  

Let’s not forget that significant progress has been made in meeting water recovery targets in the Plan.  

Significant environmental outcomes have been achieved – salinity targets have been met for more than 10 years in a row,  

Connectivity has improved.

We have seen increases in the number of bird breeding events (an important indicator of river health).

During the terrible 17–19 drought environmental water brought flows that would not have otherwise been possible.

Just recently we were able to shepherd water from the northern basin through Menindee to improve water quality in the Lower Darling.  

And there is plenty more. 

Water use efficiency in cotton has improved by more than 52%, we have seen significant improvements in watering techniques and improvements in infrastructure, and importantly, we have hope for the future.  

Compare this to the Colorado River (which resembles closely the Murray Darling).

It is estimated that within 12 months Lake Mead, the largest storage on the system behind Hoover Dam will be at its lowest level since the dam was filled in 1925.  

The Colorado now stops more than 100 miles from the sea and last flowed there more than 60 years ago.

Less than 10% of all the water that flows into the Colorado reaches farms in Mexicali.

Let me be blunt. River systems like the Colorado tell us a stark story that we need to pay attention to.  

Here in the Murray–Darling Basin we have a plan and we have to keep at it because healthy rivers and a healthy basin benefits everyone. 

And it also means that everyone has to give a bit in order to get a bit.

The recent Restoring Our Rivers legislation did give communities the additional time and flexibility they had been asking for.  

States do have more time to implement projects to remove constraints, and we are working with them to develop a Constraints Roadmap by year's end.

As part of its approach the Government has announced a voluntary water purchase program to recover up to 70 GL in the southern connected Basin from private diverters during 2024–25.

Based on input derived from the MDBA’s environmental water planning, delivery and operations MDBA expertise and experience, we think the intended approach, including location and scale of water recovery in 2024–25, from an environmental standpoint, does not present significant Basin Plan implementation issues.  

Should you be interested, the MDBA’s technical advice is publicly available from our website.

Now, through the Review, we have the opportunity to ensure that the Basin Plan continues to adapt and keep pace with change and the challenges ahead.

Over the past 12 years, your communities have experienced drought, floods and increasing temperatures as greater climate variability associated with global climate change has made weather patterns less predictable.

Agriculture has seen broadscale industry restructuring, swings in commodity prices, and dramatic changes to global export markets.  

These are factors beyond our immediate control.  

The Basin Plan, however, is within our control.  

During the MDBA annual conference in Albury just over 3 weeks ago, we shared for the first time, our early insights on the journey to a better more adaptable Plan.

The Early Insights Paper presents 5 areas that we've identified as key areas of challenge and opportunity as we go into the Review.  

They cut across 4 themes of the Review, climate change, First Nations, Sustainable Water Limits and regulatory design.

In sharing these insights, I believe we are signalling a number of important aspects of our approach:

• That we do embark on Basin Plan review with a deep sense of purpose to make the Basin Plan better.
• That we have a commitment to inclusivity.  
• That we recognize the complexity of this challenge, and  
• That we don’t have all the answers.  
• That managing water requires hard decisions and challenging trade offs.  
• That not everyone will agree with our approach.  

But our commitment to you is that we will ensure that the process is fair and the evidence base is clear.  

This isn’t about passing the pub test. It’s about making sure the conversations are had – in the pub, on the ground, and in rooms like this.

The early insights are a window into our thinking on the 5 areas we are grappling with as we prepare for the Basin Plan Review.

Now the EIP is not a technical science report – this will come later with the release of the Sustainable Rivers Audit, Evaluation and Sustainable Yields reports.

This is about providing insights and thought-starters on the various challenges we are facing and how we can improve the Basin Plan to better tackle these challenges into the future.

So firstly, we know for example that SDLs are of vital interest to communities.  

They determine how much surface and groundwater can be taken to support consumptive use and thus affect environmental, cultural, social and economic outcomes across the Basin.  

We will evaluate the effectiveness of the SDLs in supporting desired Basin Plan environmental outcomes over the next 10 years and out to 2050. We will use the best available science and knowledge, taking a multiple-lines-of-evidence approach.  

Where we identify areas of immediate risk, we will work through potential management options (including SDL and non-SDL options) and we will conduct environmental, social and economic analyses to determine impacts.

Second, climate variability has always been a feature of the Basin – driven by large-scale atmosphere ocean systems. And climate change is causing shifts in regional climate patterns and increasing the variability of the climate in the Basin, which could create undesirable conditions for the environmental outcomes set in the Basin Plan.  

We need to have honest conversations about what outcomes will be feasible under increasing variability and how we mitigate the impacts to best support desired environmental outcomes, and social, cultural and economic values.

Third, providing water for the environment has been essential to achieving Basin management outcomes, but ‘just adding water’ is not sufficient.  

To get better outcomes across the Basin we need to collaborate and focus on:  

• River operations and delivering water for the environment
• Water quality and water security not just water quantity
• Holistic land and water management  

We are grappling with how the Authority can ensure what we all know – that we get the best outcomes when rivers, land and water resources are managed together.

Fourth, we know there are key differences between the northern and southern Basin  

In the north:  

• Flows are highly dependent on episodic rainfall; rivers and channels may be ephemeral and/or have experienced historic variability, including periods where the rivers ceased to flow entirely.  
• Some rivers are unregulated.  
• Public water storages are generally smaller in volume than in the south and only exist in some river systems. In addition, on-demand water supplied from storage is limited to a smaller number of valleys and/or smaller volumes than in the south.  
• Management of river flows is driven by rules for when water can be taken and individual event-based protections.

And finally, from the EIP we want to simplify and improve elements of the Basin Plan to better support Basin management outcomes. This includes:  

• water resource plan development and accreditation processes  
• the environmental watering management framework  
• water quality management  
• monitoring, evaluation and reporting processes.  

Looking ahead, my approach – the MDBA approach – is to play a facilitating role bringing the voices of the Basin into the room as we progress our work towards the Basin Plan Review in 2026. I was delighted to have several of you in the room back in April when we held the Basin leadership summit in Sydney. Events like that are about having the right people in the room having the right conversations so we can genuinely find solutions together. And that was the first of what will be a couple of summits between now and the end of 2026.

We will be listening to you and your communities to ask ourselves how those choices impact the outcomes we care about as a community – social, cultural, environmental, and economic.

You know your communities, your industries, and your environment better than anyone.  

So, we want the insights of local governments, and we want to better understand your aspirations for water management as it supports local outcomes.

We are engaging governments and communities in open, constructive, and collaborative conversations that reflect the diversity of views, not shy away from them.

But we are not wedded to just the MDBA way of doing things.

Tell us what you think.  

• What do you expect of us?
• What else do we need to do?  
• What is working? What’s tricky? What might we do differently?

The Authority will be open, transparent, collaborative – with Basin Governments, and with the community.  

With your communities.

We will continue to listen.

We will share with you and seek your feedback every step of the way.

I look forward to continuing to work with you.

And again, thank you for having me. Thanks a lot.

ENDS