Richard Beasley - Dead in the Water: A Very Angry Book About our Greatest Environmental Catastrophe. The Death of the Murray-Darling Basin

Thanks to Quentin Dempster for giving me the idea of writing this book, and strongly suggesting I do it, and to Richard Walsh at Allen & Unwin for insisting on it. Who knows what well ultimately think of that idea, but at least I had nothing else to do in 2020. Rebecca Kaiser, editorial director at Allen & Unwin, edited my manuscript, and its a lot better for her work. Im sure there will be other people to thank at Allen & Unwin, but we are not quite there yet as I write this. To my agent, Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown, thanks for nearly bringing Allen & Unwin to its knees during a pandemic fighting for my advance.

There are a select few journalists, scientists, lawyers, relatively loose cannons on Twitter (my favourite), and apparent communistsprint, TV and radio, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, the Australia Institutewho have covered and written about the rotten scandal that is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Reporting on this complex issue could not be easygood on you. Ive found a spot (and grateful use) for I hope all of you somewhere within this book, appropriately cited in footnotes of course.

Bret Walker SC, the Royal Commissioner for the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, led a team of lawyers and legal assistants that I both like and admire. Our instructing solicitor, Joanne Masters, is too strict with her kids, and the commissions junior counsel, Sean OFlaherty, is the only junior who has fainted on me, but they did a very fine job. As for Bret, I cannot think of a worse commissioner for a royal commission into the Basin Plan, if my perspective was solely that of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, the drafters of the unlawful Basin Plan, the Department of Agriculture and Water, the governments of the Commonwealth and every basin state, and the mayor of Renmark. Im not even going to mention the current South Australian Minister for Environment, Water and (God Save the Coorong) the River Murray. It was a privilege being a counsel assisting.

A special acknowledgement. There must be a lot of fantastic people, and very good scientists, who have worked at the MDBA, or still do. Unfortunately, you did not ultimately set the environmentally sustainable level of take for the Basin Plan. Other people did, and they are not fantastic or very good. Feel free to write to me and let me know you are not part of the maladministration, covered in this book. I guarantee Allen & Unwin will publish a list of your names in an appendix to Dead in the Water should it go into a sixth reprint.

Special thanks to the hydrologists, ecologists, water economists, computer modellers, climate change experts, former employees of the MDBA and CSIRO, other experts and other witnesses who gave evidence at the royal commission, many of whom have been tolling a bell about the shortcomings and unlawfulness of the Basin Plan for many years. And, of course, thanks to the Aboriginal elders and leaders who gave evidence, who provided a perspective no other people can.

Thanks to Dr Emma Carmody of the Environmental Defenders Office, who read a draft of this book, and afforded me the benefit of her unmatched knowledge of water law and policy. Emma was the first person to tell me that the Basin Plan is unlawful. Shes been right about that now for too long.

The Basin Plan has been beset, to a level that I think is beyond shameful, with more than just shortcomings and unlawfulnessif Ive gotten anything across in this book, I hope its that. And thats a great pity, because as ideas go to restore and protect our environment, a Basin Plana proper, honest, science-based, lawful planis one of the best this country has had.

See references to these descriptions liberally spread throughout Commissioner Bret Walkers Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission report, dated January 2019.

I would like to credit Dr Emma Carmody from the Environmental Defenders Office for introducing me to this disease, as well as educating me on its symptoms.

Opening statement of Counsel Assisting, Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, T 24 L39-40.

Each of these terms was a finding made about the Basin Plans drafting or implementation by Commissioner Bret Walker SC in his Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission report.

Natalie Kolsios and Tory Shepherd, SA Water Minister in foulmouthed tirade at fellow politicians, The Advertiser, 18 November 2016; ABC News online, 21 November 2016.

ibid.

ibid.

On the Couch, Justinian, 6 February 2019.

The Australian, 21 May 2020.

.

Tom Trevorrow (now deceased), Ngarrindjeri Nation, River Country Spirit Ceremony, 2010.

Allen & Unwin, 2005.

Amy Remeikis and Sarah Martin, PMs Office refuses to release drought reports Barnaby Joyce sent by text, The Guardian, 27 December 2019.

Preamble to the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement.

ABS, Definition of drought, Yearbook Australia, 1988.

BOM, Climate Glossary, 2006.

BOM, What is Drought?, 2019.

John Howard, address to the National Press Club, 25 January 2007.

ibid.

ibid.

ibid.

ibid.

ibid.

Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission report.

The Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan, vol 1., pp. 10815.

ibid.

Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission report, p. 145.

ibid. MDBA, The Proposed Environmentally Sustainable Level of Take for Surface Water of the Murray Darling Basin: Methods and Outcome, November 2011, p. 30; evidence of Prof. Rebecca Lester at Royal Commission T493-5.

Tony Burke, ministerial statement, 25 October 2010.

MDBA, media release, 26 October 2010.

ibid.

Developing the Guide to the Proposed Basin PlanPeer Review Reports, May 2010.

See generally the evidence of David Bell, Jason Alexandra and Maryanne Slattery, all ex-MDBA staff, in the transcript of the Royal Commission hearings.

ibid.

ibid.

Media statement on resignation of Michael Taylor, 7 December 2010.

Craig Knowles, speech to the Sustaining Rural Communities Conference, April 2011.

ibid.

MDBA, Response to the South Australian Royal Commission, February 2019.

See Royal Commission report, on most of the 754 pages.

ibid., pp. 55, and 56 and others.

ibid., p. 247.

ibid., pp. 215, 714.

ibid., p. 54.

ibid., p. 56.

ibid.

ibid., writ large through all 746 pages.

ibid., p. 439.

ibid., p. 61.

ibid., p. 55.

ibid., p. 59.

Water Act, s.3(c).

ibid., s.20(d).

Royal Commission report, p. 151.

ibid., p. 153.

Bianca Hall, Uncommonly goodthe case of Pells lawyer Bret Walker, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 2020.

ibid., and Pope Francis.

Royal Commission report, p. 43, fn 14.

ibid.

Lenore Taylor, Basin Plan gets bogged down in legal wrangling, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 October 2010.

Murray-Darling Basin Authority, The Proposed Environmentally Sustainable Level of Take for Surface Water of the Murray Darling Basin: methods and outcomes, 2015, p. v.

CSIRO, Science Review of the Estimation of an Environmentally Sustainable Level of Take, November 2011, p. 12.

ibid., p. 19.

ibid., p. 24.

ibid.

ibid., p. 28.

ibid.

ibid., p. 30.