Two Decades of Murray-Darling Water Management: A River of Funding, a Trickle of Achievement
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Two Decades of Murray-Darling Water Management: A River of Funding, a Trickle of Achievement

Lisa Yu-Ting Lee

Tihomir Ancev[1]

Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction
A Brief History of Water Management in the Murray-Darling Basin
The river of funding
Water Reform and National Competition Policy
The Living Murray First Step
Commonwealth Supplementary Fund to the Living Murray
The Cap
National Water Initiative — the Australian Water Fund
Water for the Future (formerly National Plan for Water Security)
The Joint Works Program: The Basin Salinity Management Strategy
Other Related Programs
Transparency, Consistency and Courage
Social Cost of Inaction
Conclusions
References

Abstract

The paper appraises the myriad of Murray-Darling Basin-related policies since the early 1990s. It contends that significant environmental improvements could have been achieved at substantially lower cost had decisive action been taken earlier. If the total expenditures in the last two decades had been put solely towards water entitlement buy-backs, an amount of water several times that necessary to significantly improve the health of the Basin would have been acquired.



[1] The Centre for Applied Economic Research, University of New South Wales; the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Sydney. Correspondence: lisa.lee@unsw.edu.au This work was funded by the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities program. The authors would like to thank Kevin Fox, Quentin Grafton, Jeff Bennett, William Coleman and an anonymous referee for their helpful suggestions and feedback.

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