Balancing Consumptive and Environmental Water Use –An Australian Perspective - Water and Agriculture: Sustainability, Markets and Policies - page 182

The Murray-Darling Basin Agreement
The Basin is administered by the Australian Government, four state and one territory
governments, and more than 200 local governments. These governments manage the
natural resources of the Basin in partnership with numerous catchment bodies, landcare
groups and other community organisations. Management of the Murray-Darling Basin
requires the balancing of many values and assets that are potentially in competition.
Tensions exist between some production-orientated activities and environmental needs.
There is also competition between different economic and social interests.
Intergovernmental co-operation on managing the River Murray has occurred since
1915, when the governments of Australia, New South Wales, South Australia and
Victoria signed the River Murray Waters Agreement to secure minimum flows and
manage navigation along the river. To address broader water and natural resource
management issues, it was replaced by the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement
(Agreement) in 1987.
The Agreement was first ratified by the governments of the Commonwealth, New
South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia in 1987 after two years of intensive
negotiations between the four governments, in appreciation of the need to promote and
co-ordinate effective planning and management for the equitable, efficient and
sustainable use of the water, land and other environmental resources. The Agreement
provides the process and substance for the integrated management of the Basin, and is
recognition of the fact that no one government or group of people was able to deal with
the Basin's emerging natural resource management problems. The involvement of the
community is recognition of the fact that the task was not one that governments could
fulfil on their own.
The Agreement was subsequently revised in 1992. Queensland became a signatory in
1996 and the Australian Capital Territory became an informal partner in 1998. There are
thus six formal partner governments in the Agreement, with many departments and
agencies involved. Whilst there are a number of other inter-jurisdictional agreements in
the Murray-Darling Basin which continue to operate, they are beyond the scope of this
paper.
The Agreement established new institutions at the political, bureaucratic and
community levels to underpin its implementation. The overarching bodies are the
Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council, Murray-Darling Basin Commission and the
Community Advisory Committee. The Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council is the
primary body responsible for providing the policy and direction. It comprises the
ministers responsible for land, water and environmental resources within the contracting
governments.
An autonomous organisation equally responsible to the governments represented on
the Ministerial Council as well as to the council itself, the Murray-Darling Basin
Commission (Commission) is neither a government department nor a statutory body of
any individual government. The Commission has a role to equitably and efficiently
manage and distribute the water resources of the River Murray in accordance with the
Agreement to obtain the highest achievable quality and efficiency of use of such
resources. It was created out of the desire by the six governments to have an organisation
that transcended the political boundaries between these jurisdictions to manage the far-
reaching Murray-Darling river catchments as effectively as possible.