Well, with so many competing interests how could it not be a huge compromise or a virtual dogs breakfast of a plan?
We did have an opportunity to fix the thing from the mountains down to the sea, irrespective of state borders or so called state's rights. We have already created a precedent and used external powers, to prevent a state from misusing an important waterway, when we took on Tassie and its intended plan for the Franklin.
We made a mistake in allowing over allocated water to become private tradable property.
No such property right ought to exist.
The end result, too many dams in all the wrong places.
We need many more dams in our high country, to force trillions of tons of record flood water into the landscape, from where it is not subject to evaporation outcomes, and is allowed to slowly leach back into our waterways, during those dry periods, where there is little or no rain.
All on farm storage ought to be covered and all irrigation applied via underground tapes.
This would allow doubled production for half the water use; or, normal production for quarter!
Strategically placed weirs, could be closed from time to time, to flood the red gums. Reopening them, in electronically controlled sequence, could send a wall of water right down to the Coorong and the river mouth, to routinely flush both out?
The river is one of the most engineered waterways in the world! It is patently not possible to unengineer it, just do it over and get it right.
Open channels that lose 60-70% of their flow to evaporation and leaking, must all be replaced with pipes.
Many of the traditional crops, like say, water hungry rice, need to be replaced with far less thirsty crops, like say, oil rich algae, which in closed cycle production, use just 2-3% of traditional irrigation, and will happily thrive on recycled water; which it cleans, before returning it to other use.
All our rice should be grown in the north, where our annual rainfall can be measured in metres!
Rhrosty.

Finally an article that addresses the big picture. What kind of society do we want to live in and what do we need to consider so we will be able to live in harmony with the Murray-Darling in light of droughts and floods - influenced by accelerating climate changes? These are much more important questions that doing endless maths - which are then contested by another group - about how many gigalitres ought to be saved here or there ... added her and there...subtracted here and there. Professor Bell must be congratulated for daring to go against the grain of the self-congratulations and backslapping of other spokespeople. Yes we now have a plan, but what will it mean for the next generation and the one after? What will it mean for the river, the first Australians and all of us that live around it and enjoy its powerful beauty in all its permutations as the river flows toward the Murray mouth in South Australia. The proof will indeed be in the pudding.

Just the sort of muddled tripe you'd expect from am anthropologists who has got too close to her subject, & can't see past the trees.

She wants all that salt "flushed out to sea through the Murray Mouth"
but thinks that cam happen when the entire mouth is damned by a barrage.

This is the sort of rubbish you should expect when you get a humanities type talking hydrology.

No wonder we are in a mess.

"The two million tonnes of salt generated by the Murray-Darling system each year must be flushed out to sea through the Murray Mouth. It needs to be open."

But there are man-made barriers across the Murray Mouth right at its sea boundary. Before the barriers were built, tidal salt water used to reach some 70 miles upriver, and salt was flushed out to sea. It would make economic sense for the barriers to be removed, and structural adjustment assistance given to the farmers adversely affected by the barrier removal.

The legislated minimum environmental flows are nonsensical. Once again the national interest has been trumped by capitulation to environmental activists. In the days of the natural river environment --before dams were built -- environmental flows in many MDB rivers would reduce to a trickle or cease altogether during seasonal dry periods.

The [Deleted for abuse.] just defies belief.

Obviously if the government is to plan the use of the river, how can it avoid the politicisation of science? That's what the author is *for*, while stupidly complaining against it. And this base confusion is coming from a professor of social science!

What gets me about this kind of article, is what makes this [Deleted for abuse.] think that she would have the faintest idea how to manage an entire river basin so as to satisfy the most urgent and important wants of all the people in the world with an interest in its different possible uses, now and in the future? It is in the nature of the original problem that she, and the MDBA, and the government, and any committee of experts whatsoever, are absolutely INCAPABLE of the knowledge she just flacidly assumes they must have!

But it gets worse. She actively opposes any principle that could find out. Because by vesting the power of decision-making in a political committee, just think: *How* are they going to know what are the subjective values of the people that they are charged to satisfy?, and how are they going to integrate those different values in any lowest common denominator. She herself is opposed to it! If her basal assumption was right, Soviet central planning would be a wonderful success!

[Deleted for abuse.]

If she had an iota of social science, she would and should have condemned the MDBP plan as a fraud from the outset.

Professor Bell draws attention here to the big picture and the big questions that cut to the heart of the nation and its future, to which a healthy flourishing Murray Darling system is vital. This is science in its fullest expression, considering the complex multitude of interconnected factors that connect the River to all within its system, including us. Thank you for such an original and bold analysis. I don't think Professor Bell is suggesting that she manages the future of the river system - but rather that we enlarge the scope and depth of our conversation when considering its and our future.

"Professor Bell draws attention here to the big picture and the big questions ..."

No she doesn't. The reason why not is because the "we" she refers to means everyone in the world, now and indefinitely into the future, who have an interest in "the environment". (And if not why not?) The population of Australia is 23 million, but the population of the world is 7,000 million. Those 7 billion have an interest in the use of the MDB which, in Diane's own terms need to be taken into consideration in the decision-making process. But the decision-making authority will be vested in a teeny tiny little completely unrepresentative technocratic committee that has no way of knowing what those 7 billion people want from the MDB. How do "scientists", let alone "poets and songsters", know whether they want more food? Or more wetlands? How?

"This is science in its fullest expression, considering the complex multitude of interconnected factors..."

But the science doesn't consider them, that's the whole point! The process that she is assuming has the capacity to take all those things into consideration, is IN FACT not capable of knowing or integrating them. And she's completely ignorant of this fact. How could the process she envisages have any other result than vested interests bickering over incommensurable values backed up only by arbitrary political force - exactly what she thinks she's against? She's totally confused and making a fool of herself.

"...rather that we enlarge the scope and depth of our conversation when considering its and our future."

She's not enlarging the scope and depth of the conversation, she's immeasurably reducing it, by confusing "we" - meaning the world, with "we" - meaning the MDBA.

She doesn't understand the first thing about social science, and if she did, she'd know that Soviet-style bureaucratic central planning is worse for human beings and the environment, not better.

Prof Bell is right: the wrong questions were asked, the wrong solutions sought – the reticence to use the science, the avoidance of solutions and the triumph of lowest levels of commitment in the name of compromise. We saw feral right wing book burning, the denigration of science, the posturing of Ministers, the hypocrisy of vested interests inside and outside the Parliaments, and the political cowardice of today’s academics and scientists.

And the result: the failure to understand the urgent imperative to meet the impending challenges of accommodating to climate change; the failure to understand the imperatives of food security; and the failure to understand that failing these tasks is to fail not only the ecology of the river system but the sustainability of communities in the Murray-Darling Basin. And CSG remains a threat in the Basin.

But then we live in a period when the two largest political parties have lost any of the idealism on which they were founded and are captives of vested interest. Their leaders have little or no vision for Australia, and who have no clue about preparing for a world in rapid planetary transition.

And Jardine K. Jardine illustrates the descent into ignorant abuse that was displayed by many who lined themselves up against the imperative of putting the river system first so the rest follows: prosperity and sustainability. Jardine's tirade has no basis: a) Prof Bell IS a social scientist and called for wider inclusion; b) she has been prominently critical of the MDB plan from the start; and c) she is on the public record as campaigning for a science-based outcome.

Seamus anyone who suggests a dammed river mouth can flush salt out to sea is nothing but a fool.

A bit like those who still believe in global warming. Of course those fools are nowhere near as bad as those who realise global warming is a fools game, but still continue to use it to influence public policy.

Seamus, you and Diane are the ones arguing for a political solution, remember?

Well? You got it.

Your and Diane's talk of science is completely bogus. Science doesn't supply value judgments, while policy requires them. Science doesn't say what should be done with the MDB. All you want is for your preferred values to be forced on everyone else, simple as that, and your appeal to science is either ignorant or dishonest, there's no other possibility