Page 3446 - Week 11 - Thursday, 15 November 2007
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discussions began about the management of the Murray-Darling Basin. Those discussions ultimately resulted in the Murray-Darling Basin agreement, the establishment of a ministerial council and the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. Importantly, on top of this, the ministerial council established a formally appointed community advisory committee of 22 members, plus an independently appointed chair. Members are selected on the basis of their skills, expertise and networks.
The primary role of the community advisory committee is to act as an information channel between the basin communities and the ministerial council and back again. This includes participating in community engagement programs and providing feedback to the council on the effectiveness of these programs. This is critical to the success or otherwise of the commission’s work because every decision made by the commission or the ministerial council will have an impact on the many local communities that rely on the Murray-Darling Basin for their livelihoods and, indeed, their lifestyles. That includes the ACT. Against that background, the ACT takes a somewhat privileged position as a member of the initiative, including the right to have ministerial representation on the ministerial council and representation on the commission through a commissioner and two deputy commissioners.
The agreement is extensive and, in many areas, complex. Nevertheless, its purpose is profound. The purpose is “to promote and coordinate effective planning and management for the equitable, efficient and sustainable use of the water, land and other environmental resources of the Murray-Darling Basin”. As this purpose clause suggests, management of the Murray-Darling Basin goes to all levels. This involves construction and maintenance of works associated with the basin, management, measurement, transferring, monitoring and reporting of water entitlements and allocations, water accounting arrangements, strategies to address salinity and other environmental issues, diversion caps, the effect of the Snowy scheme, and now the application of the agreement to the ACT.
One might ask why the ACT would want to be involved in the Murray-Darling Basin initiative since neither the Murray nor the Darling flow through the ACT. Of course, the answer is obvious: the basin is extensive. It covers three-quarters of New South Wales, more than half of Victoria and significant portions of Queensland and South Australia. As for the ACT, even though our area represents less than one-quarter of one per cent of the whole area of the basin, the whole of the ACT falls within the basin area. So the Murray-Darling Basin and its management are of great importance to the ACT, our people and our economy, and we have a legitimate role to play in that management. By signing up to this agreement, the ACT will be able to play our role fully and equitably with the other partner states and, of course, the commonwealth.
The admittance of the ACT to the Murray-Darling Basin initiative as a full voting member is the culmination of a relationship with the commission begun by the former ACT Liberal government when it signed the MOU 10 years ago. Both Mrs Dunne and I—she can speak for herself—feel very privileged to have been a part of that. Mrs Dunne was part of the negotiations and she did a very good job there at a bureaucratic level—
Mrs Dunne: It could be called that!
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