Transcript for Planning our Basin future together webinar

Nikki Gemmell: Good afternoon everybody.

My name is Nikki Gemmell. I'm Director of Waterway programs in the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and pleased to see we've got some people joining us today to hear about Victoria's approach to the Basin Plan, which is responding to changes in Commonwealth legislation.

Before I begin, first of all, I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of lands and waters where you're calling in from and where I am, I'm on Eastern Maar country, and also to pay my respects to the mobs who are on country that is affected by the Basin Plan.

We will have plenty of time at the end for questions and comments. I've got a bit of a presentation to run through. It will explain a little bit about Basin Plan and where we've come from and what's happened and what Victoria's proposed approach is, which is what we're engaging on at the moment. So there is a document called Planning Our Basin Future Together, which is Victoria's prospectus for approaching this new context we find ourselves in engaging with Victorian communities on whether they think that's the right approach for us going forward. And if it is, that will then trigger a, you know, a range of processes with the Commonwealth and with community.

So Victoria's approach is firmly rooted in catchment management, and I'll talk a little bit about that. I will talk about the Commonwealth changes and then our next steps pending feedback from community.

When I talk about catchment management, we have a framework in Victoria that is focused on looking at the multiple values that our natural environment provides, and working at a regional scale with communities to care for that environment with public and private landholders and communities. And we've got, you know, more than two decades of experience in working in that way through catchment management authorities and other partners. The diagram off on the right here is actually from the Northern Region Sustainable Water Strategy back in 2009. So just that demonstration that we've been thinking about the multiple values and planning for them in the way that we look to improve outcomes for our rivers and floodplains and catchments, all in a context of huge modifications to our natural environment. There's a lot of development on the floodplain.

And so thinking about doing catchment management for a long time. And that's the kind of mentality that we want to bring to this new phase of Basin Plan implementation that we're in. And just by way of an example of some of the evidence that we have of this and what it means to say we take a catchment approach. Whether we're talking about salinity management in irrigation regions, where catchment management authorities have worked with water corporations and with irrigators to bring what were very high risk water tables down to a much more manageable level over decades, managing both for productive use and for the health of the river. That's what you can see on the left-hand side with those water table maps for Shepparton irrigation region. Or whether it's how we think about what are the barriers to fish movement throughout rivers and how do we improve connectivity. And the map on the right shows you some of those significant barriers. We're always looking at both the local scale and then the regional scale to see where we best put our effort and use the evidence to drive decisions to improve outcomes.

So that's the kind of approach that we want to take in terms of thinking about Basin Plan. Why are we putting out a new document now? Well, what's changed is that the Restoring Our Rivers Act, which passed through Commonwealth Parliament late last year, has changed what was originally agreed upon in 2012 by the States and Commonwealth in terms of what Basin Plan would do and how it would work.

So first of all, in the early years of working to restore the health of the Murray River, there was water recovery through open tender buybacks both throughout Victoria and other areas. The impacts of that were seen and as a result there was a cap put on how much water the Commonwealth would outright buy through open tender. That cap was put in place many years ago. The new legislation removes that cap. So it basically removes a brake that was on the Commonwealth government of buying water from individual sellers without any kind of strategic plan of how that water could be used to improve environmental values, or what the impact of that ad hoc buying from individuals might have on communities and irrigation systems.

What the new Act also does is create new powers for the Commonwealth to purchase water not just towards that original target of 2750 under Basin Plan, but also to purchase water towards an additional 450 gigalitres, which in the original Basin Plan was only to be water recovered if that could be shown to have neutral or positive social and economic impacts.

Now the new powers allow for that water to be bought back by open tender buybacks and then some other form of assistance that might minimise the socioeconomic impacts.

So it's quite a shift there as well.

Both of those two things coming together means that buybacks will happen in the southern connected basin and in Victoria. And so that's something that, whilst it's Victorian government policy position against buybacks, it will happen regardless. And so we need to respond to that.

The other two key things that that new Commonwealth legislation has done was put a focus on the need for cross jurisdictional planning to implement relaxed constraints. What that means is when environmental water is released from storages for some uses downstream, it's currently constrained to be within a channel. If there is a way that the risks and the liabilities can be worked through, then in future environmental water can be released in a way that can flow up over the banks and provide additional benefits to the lower floodplain, and more environmental water can get down to some large sites that need large volumes. But it has to be done in a way that mitigates those risks and manages liability.

So the Murray Darling Basin Authority has been tasked with development of a road map to see how we can work through those questions with multiple jurisdictions. The other thing that the Act does is provide more time for environmental works and measures projects, which are sometimes called SDLAM projects, sustainable diversion adjustment limit mechanisms. What they were at the original time of Basin Plan was an understanding that even with more environmental water in storages, you can't always get them to the environmental sites and keep that water at the environmental sites for the time that those habitats need to restore themselves, to have a good drink.

And so those projects are designed to use infrastructure or the removal of barriers, combination of both, to be able to water environments that are higher up on the floodplain that because of the building of towns and roads and bridges now no longer get water to them and can't really unless you have that massive scale flood that we've seen in the last couple of years.

So these projects are designed to be able to get water to those areas and deliver environmental outcomes. They're complex projects. They've been given more time, but only until December 2026.

Where we're at in terms of implementing the overarching water recovery goals under Basin Plan is that quite a lot of water is now held in storages for environmental use. And you know, we have a strong governance framework that makes sure that water is used, is planned and delivered in a way that goes to best environmental outcomes.

We have good evidence of those outcomes, and we have gathered that, we've recovered that water. It's a collection of water through a range of projects, including that early water buyback, but also a range of projects that were water efficiency projects. So improvements to irrigation systems that achieved water savings. So there's a great deal of water recovery that has been achieved and a lot of that is Victorian high reliability water shares. So, you know, we have been contributing for those important, important environmental outcomes.

There's a series of projects that are called environmental works and measures, or sometimes called SDLAM projects. They are designed to be completed to provide equivalent environmental outcomes up to 650 gigalitres. Where those projects don't deliver, that's where the Commonwealth now no longer has a cap to come in and buy back water instead. And as I mentioned before, there is this additional 450 gigalitres, which is additional buybacks that the Commonwealth is now able to do.

Our priority for Victoria is to deliver those projects that will provide environmental outcomes that just having water in storage can't do. And that will contribute towards the 650 gigalitres which will, you know, both improve our environment and protect our communities from open buybacks.

We now have a legislation that allows that buyback to happen regardless.

And so we are engaging now on how do we respond to that. It's unclear and not yet decided I don't think by the Commonwealth government. I can't speak on their behalf, but it seems to be unclear at this stage what volumes will be targeted from where, and what environmental outcomes - specifically water recovery from different areas - will achieve. What we do know from our observations of the early water recovery through open tender buy