Two of the Basin Plan’s four overarching objectives are to optimise the social, economic and environmental use of water in the national interest; and, to improve water security for all water users.
One of its three outcomes is productive and resilient water-dependent industries, and communities with confidence in their long-term future.
However, multiple studies and lived experience over the last decade show the Basin Plan is failing to deliver on its socioeconomic obligations in communities directly affected by water recovery.
Reducing the consumptive pool by 37% in the southern connected Basin has reduced the resilience of water-dependent industries to shocks such as droughts, reduced production of staples such as rice and dairy, undermined the commercial viability of irrigation districts, and caused flow-on impacts to food processing, transport and services jobs in towns.
The result is communities that are less likely to have confidence in their long-term future compared with Basin communities with little to no irrigation and therefore unaffected by water recovery. Most residents in RAMJO LGAs in 2023 did not agree that water is being managed to achieve positive outcomes for communities.2 And this was before the Federal Government started new buyback rounds in 2024.
The Federal Government aims to buy back 300 GL in the southern Basin towards its 450 GL target, with an acute risk of another 300 GL recovery in response to the SDLAM reconciliation in December 2026.
ABARES modelling indicates water recovery to 2020 has added an annual average $72/ML to the water allocation price. Its modelling shows another 600 GL from the southern consumptive pool will make allocation water prices $170/ML higher3,4 than they would have been without Basin Plan recovery.
Consider the impact of annual average allocation prices being $170/ML higher than without water recovery, when Frontier Economics warned in 2022 that:
the market price for water is too high to justify large areas of rice production except when water allocation prices are below $120 – $150 per ML.
The one-off $300 million Sustainable Communities Program is grossly inadequate compared to the scale of socioeconomic damage caused by continued water recovery. The $160 million of the fund allocated to NSW Basin communities barely figures compared to the annual $400 million economic loss to Riverina and NSW Murray towns at high risk if SunRice is forced to offshore its local manufacturing. This commercial decision will be driven by rice growing continuing to contract due to water recovery for the environment reducing water availability to grow food and driving up water allocation prices.
The MDBA’s best available science in its initial SDL assessments reinforce that this additional water recovery is not even justified on environmental grounds. They show little to no difference in achieving environmental outcomes with amount recovered as of 30 June 2024, compared with the additional recovery of 450 GL plus an anticipated 300 GL SDLAM shortfall.
The initial SDL assessments show volume of flow is no longer the problem, but rather challenges such as constraints restricting environmental watering of floodplains and wetlands, and invasive species such as European carp wrecking native fish habitat and water quality.
Local economies in towns across southern NSW have taken a big hit from the recovery of 37% of the southern Basin’s consumptive pool under Basin Plan and pre-Basin Plan reforms. The focus on farm-level impacts has ignored the flow-on impacts for jobs in local food processing, transport and farm services, and for shops, sporting clubs, health services and schools. The tourism industry is equally aggrieved, with river operational decisions being made that undermine the viability of businesses, too.
Governments and agencies sticking their heads in the sand on the social and economic impacts of water recovery was never acceptable. The 2026 Basin Plan Review must take a whole of economy approach. It is more critical than ever that the regional and local impacts are assessed and understood over the next phase of the Basin Plan to 2036, with government funding and other support to help impacted communities regain confidence in their long-term future.
The Basin Plan must pivot away from volumetric water recovery volumes to placed-based, environmental goals. That means water recovery by any means, including buybacks and rules changes, must stop immediately.
The Basin Plan Review must then reposition the policy framework so that it does not pit farmers or communities against environmentalists, but rather sees farmers and environmentalists and communities and businesses all working together to achieve shared outcomes in the environment, agriculture and tourism.
RAMJO Member Councils recommended the following policy changes:
- Immediately cease water recovery by any means, including buybacks and rules changes. Redirect the remaining water recovery funding to collaborative projects to improve environmental outcomes.
- No change in sustainable diversion limits (SDLs). RAMJO expects when the MDBA submits the SDLAM reconciliation results to the Minister, it will advise its best available science shows reducing the SDLs will not support better environmental outcomes, as volume of flow is generally not the issue but rather constraints on watering floodplains and need for complementary measures.
- Clarify the environmental goals we are collectively seeking to achieve. Getting everyone on the same page about what exactly we need to improve environmental outcomes is a critical first step.
• Partner with local communities and LGAs to work out how to deliver environmental water onto floodplains and into wetlands within existing constraints, to improve environmental outcomes. - Take a place-based approach where local stakeholders can participate genuinely in working together to improve environmental outcomes. To start this level of collaboration we need to be empowered and resourced to lead at the local level instead of having government dictate the terms and the solutions. Government and communities must work in partnership as equals.
- All decisions are subject first to a comprehensive assessment of local and regional socioeconomic impacts. Unless impacts are neutral, or have been knowingly traded off with the agreement of a local community, implementation should not proceed. Reliance on arcane economic modelling by academics and distant consultants must be balanced with qualitative and quantitative evidence collected at local and regional scale, using indicators meaningful to the communities.
- Environmental outcomes on farm or on local Crown Land managed by others should be included in the goals and measures of success. Whether it is farmers nurturing private wetlands, or rice growers providing vital feeding and breeding habitat for birds like the endangered Australasian Bittern, all should be included in the measures of environmental success, not only results on Government-owned and managed land.
- Local government should have a seat at the Basin Ministerial Council table. It is local people and local places that bear the brunt of many of the Basin Plan decisions and local government should be represented as a legitimate voice at the government decision-making table.
- Work with local government on improving river operations so that efforts to diversify local economies through investment in tourism infrastructure are not undermined by, for example, very high flows drowning Murray River beaches during peak tourism periods.
- Develop projects of national importance to capture and store more water in wet years to support farmers through dry years, including more on-farm storage to enable full use of allocations.
- Ongoing funding to support communities adjusting to the socioeconomic impacts of water recovery, and compensation for farmers’ increased costs associated with water recovery.
- Release the draft MDBA 2026 Basin Plan Review report with no less than six weeks for public review, so that stakeholders can be satisfied they been heard and understood without misinterpretation, misunderstanding, or filtering for political palatability.
Read the full report here: https://www.ramjo.nsw.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/Riverina-and-Murray-Joint-Organisation-MDBP-Review-2026-Submission-Final.pdf