Australia must rethink how Indigenous knowledge and climate change are incorporated into the management of the country's largest river network, the new boss of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority says.
In a speech to the National Rural Press Club in Canberra today, MDBA chief executive Andrew McConville will appeal for First Nations people to be included in water management in a "real and meaningful way".
"All of us need to work harder to provide a place for First Nations people in water management decision-making," Mr McConville will say.
"We need to rethink how we incorporate Indigenous knowledge into the way we manage water in the Basin.
"We need to do this in a respectful and culturally appropriate way … this, I see, is the great unfinished business of water management in the Murray-Darling Basin."
Less than 1 per cent of the water in the Murray-Darling Basin is owned by Aboriginal people.
In 2018, the Coalition government committed $40 million to help Indigenous Australians "to economically participate in water and ensure that they get not only economic but also cultural outcomes".
The funding is yet to be delivered.
Mr McConville, a former oil and gas industry lobbyist, was appointed to head up the MDBA in the dying days of the final parliament.
His first speech to the National Rural Press Club marks a decade since the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was legislated, setting out how water is to be shared between the environment, farming and communities.
With less than two years before major water-saving deadlines must be reconciled, Mr McConville is expected to highlight, in his speech, the challenges that climate change presents for river management, referring to CSIRO modelling that shows inflows could fall by 30 per cent by 2050.
"That's 30 per cent less water in our rivers," he will say.
In an excerpt from his address, released ahead of the event, Mr McConville will say he visited 36 Basin communities since commencing his role in late June.
"Hand on heart, literally no-one has said throw it out," he will tell the press club.
The plan has had plenty of detractors, arguing it either does not do enough to help the environment or it has devastated communities, where irrigation-agriculture has dwindled.
Since the Basin Plan was legislated in 2012 there have been 2,100 gigalitres of water reallocated to the environment.
At a Senate Estimates hearing earlier this month, federal officials confirmed 634 gigalitres are still to be recovered for the environment from across the Basin, in order to meet the legislated targets.
It includes 49 gigalitres toward what is known as the Bridging the Gap target, 424 gigalitres toward an additional 450 gigalitres target from efficiency projects and 161 gigalitres against a 605 gigalitres target to be recovered from state-managed projects.
The Murray-Darling Basin produces $22 billion of food and fibre, generates $11 billion of tourism each year, while supporting more than 120 water bird species, 50 native fish species and 16 protected wetlands.
