The commonwealth has backed off a formal process to take over NSW’s river management and instead is having “good faith” negotiations with the recalcitrant state over when it will lodge 20 water-sharing plans for its rivers in the Murray-Darling.
A Senate estimates committee heard on Friday that NSW was still to lodge any of its 20 water-sharing plans, while other states had lodged theirs.
These plans include the detailed rules about when water can be extracted by each type of licence and when early flows and low flows are protected. They are critical to the success of the Murray-Darling Basin plan.
In late January, the former water minister David Littleproud triggered a formal process to take over NSW’s management of the rivers and withhold funds under the plan, noting that NSW’s failure to submit is 20 plans, which were due last year, was “disappointing”.
“It is not my intention to approve commonwealth expenditure to New South Wales related to the basin plan until there is demonstrated progress on water resource plans,” he wrote.
But despite the NSW water minister, Melinda Pavey, failing to reply within the two weeks to the formal notice, triggering formal mediation, the committee heard the new federal water minister, Keith Pitt, has backed off.
Bureaucrats told the committee Pitt was now in discussion with Pavey and they were “hopeful there would be progress”. There are also discussions about whether funds would be withheld.
In the past both Pavey and the NSW Nationals leader, John Barilaro, have threatened to pull out of the plan and last week Barilaro called for a royal commission into the plan.
The NSW plans have all gone through a first round of community consultation but more consultation is required and there appears to be no firm timetable for finalising the plans.
Federal ministers were also grilled over slow progress in passing legislation to establish the office of the Murray-Darling inspector general and to give him powers to demand information from states and irrigators, on pain of criminal sanctions.
The former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty is acting in the position, but no legislation has been drafted despite being announced in July last year. Instead he is operating pursuant to a letter.
The commonwealth environmental water holder, Jody Swirepik, had good news however, on the pilot project to get water into the Ramsar-listed Narran Lakes, near Lightening Ridge in NSW.
She said the commonwealth had received about 10GL under an agreement with Eastern Australia Agriculture to forego taking recent flows in the Condamine-Balonne system.
The exact amount of water will be verified at the end of the water year in June but she said it had been vital to rejuvenating the lakes, which are an important breeding ground for migratory birds.
But she was unable to tell the committee how much water the commonwealth would receive from the overland flow licences, which the commonwealth purchased from EAA in an $80m deal in 2017.
She said the licences had all been triggered and in the next few weeks she expected water to reach the lakes. She assured the committee that levees had been broken through to allow the water to reach the lakes and that it was being monitored. She said photos and video would be made available.
The controversial $80m deal is now under review by the Auditor General as to whether it was value for money.
