The Productivity Commission is doing what the Murray Darling Basin Authority refuse to do: Reviewing the effects of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, along with the National Water Initiative (now there’s a whole other kettle of fish, if you’ll excuse the pun), and they’ll be doing it every 5 years, when the Murray Darling Basin Authority insist on only looking into the consequences of their Plan every 10 years!

Treasurer Scott Morrison has instructed the commission to investigate Australia’s water resources, with a particular eye to the National Water Initiative and the need for any further reforms.

‘There is scope to further improve the water sectors’ effectiveness and efficiency, including through consistent and coordinated regulatory and management arrangements that are aligned with the NWI,’ he wrote in the inquiry’s terms of reference.

A final report is expected to be provided to the federal government by the end of this year.

The commission has also been tasked with examining the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan every five years, with the first to be completed by the end of 2018.

The cynic in me expects this review to be a waste of time, with no meaningful reforms that will return water to primary producers, control to local authorities or (shock horror!) to individuals, or change the course of our greens-mad sanctimonious suicide, where we trade human life for birdlife.

But then again, I should be grateful for small mercies, at least a review is now going to be conducted, where only a few weeks ago it was going to be another 5 years away.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) will wait 10 years before reviewing the basin plan’s impact on southern communities.

This is despite the findings of a review into the basin’s northern communities, which found they had lost too much water.

But will the Productivity Commissions findings be accepted and acted upon by the Basin Authority? Will the Commission come to constructive conclusions in the first place?

How much better off we would all be if only the MDBA and NWI hadn’t been so royally screwed up to begin with.

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