After a Zoom meeting last Thursday morning with the Murray Regional Strategy Group, followed by a robust luncheon discussion with MP Helen Dalton, Darren DeBortoli, Paul Pierotti, Brian Roberts and Johanna Brighenti, followed by a 60 minute return trip to Narrandera allowed me to digest, ruminant and conceptualise a redrafted set of four principles to move the Murray Darling Basin Plan into stage 2, with a “Solution Narrative” that in the current environment (cost of living) meets the concerns of our urban and metroplex constituents (focus on food security and focus affordability) MDB Plan - The Strategic Reality Murray Darling Basin Plan must move from an environment-only redistribution model to a national resilience and food security model. Current Model: Re-allocate water, volume targets, environment v farm, regional contraction, closed system. New Model: Expand supply, outcome targets, environment plus food security, regional resilience, adaptive system. Without addressing this Strategic Reality Australia accepts unacceptable national security risk, while outsourcing the Australian Food Supply to the Global Markets 1. Build New Water Supply (Nation-Building Storage and Banking) Core idea: Stop fighting over a shrinking pie – grow the pie. Australia must move from pure reallocation to supply expansion, including: • Large-scale off-stream storage (MDB equivalent of California’s Sites Reservoir and Kern Water Bank Trust). • Managed aquifer recharge and water banking. • Stormwater and flood harvesting infrastructure. • Strategic inter-valley and inter-basin transfer only where feasible. Without new storage: • Environmental water comes only from farms. • Food security will always lose. This is the single most important reform. You cannot secure future food supply without more controllable water in the system. 2. Make Food Security a Primary Legislative Objective Core idea: Water policy is food policy – write it into law. Amend the Water Act 2007 so that the Basin Plan must explicitly optimise for: • National food security. • Supply chain resilience. • Drought preparedness. • Strategic domestic production capacity. At present: • Environment is explicit. • Cities are implicit. • Food security is invisible. This forces every future decision to answer one question: “Does this improve or weaken Australia’s ability to feed itself?” 3. Shift from Volume Targets to Outcomes-Based Environmental Management Core idea: Stop measuring success by gigalitres moved – measure it by ecological results. Replace rigid water recovery volumes with: • Environmental outcome metrics (fish populations, wetland health, connectivity). • Localised adaptive management. • Infrastructure-based solutions (weirs, regulators, fish passages, habitat engineering). This allows: • Same or better environmental outcomes. • With less total water removed from production. • Especially in dry years. It’s smarter ecology, not weaker ecology. 4. Regional Economic Protection & Transition Framework Core idea: No water reform should be allowed to hollow out communities. Create a statutory requirement for: • Full regional economic impact modelling. • Compensation for second-order losses. • Regional investment funds linked to water recovery. • Mandatory “no net regional decline” tests. If a policy: • Closes farms, • Shrinks towns, • Destroys processing capacity, Then it fails the national interest test, regardless of environmental intent. The Strategic Reality These four reforms do one critical thing: They move the Basin Plan from an environment-only redistribution model to a national resilience and food security model. Without these reforms, Australia is making a long-term strategic bet that: • Global food markets will always function. • Global shipping will always be uninterrupted. • Australian inbound ports will always function without fault • Climate volatility won’t accelerate. • Population growth won’t strain food supply. • Australians accepting reduced fresh food selection and offerings • Australians can absorb food price inflation without collapsing the economy That is not policy. That is strategic political withholding, negligence and malpractice. A nation growing to 35-40 million people cannot outsource its food security and affordability to chance and luck. David Dickson Farley
