SUBMISSION TO THE INQUIRY INTO THE WATER AMENDMENT (RESTORING OUR

28 Wentworth Group - Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 3 Overview The Water Act 2007 (Cth) (Water Act) and the Basin Plan 2012 (Basin Plan) were bipartisan commitments by the Australian Parliament to address the chronic overallocation of water in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). [...] Wentworth Group - Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 5 Necessary amendments to the Water Act and Basin Plan (Section B of this submission) The Wentworth Group has identified four urgently needed additional reforms to the Water Act and Basin Plan that should be included in the proposed Bill. [...] Recommendation 3.1 – That the proposal in Schedule 2 of the Bill to add 7.08A(2) to the Basin Plan is amended to require the roadmap to establish clear targets and milestones for the delivery of constraints and the Enhanced Environmental Water Delivery Project (operating rules), linked to progress payments, and a requirement for transparent reporting against those milestones. [...] Recommendation 3.2 - That the proposal in Schedule 2 of the Bill to add 7.08A(2) to the Basin Plan is amended to delete “the Murray–Darling Basin Authority must” and replaced with “the Minister must appoint a suitable person or organisation to prepare” the roadmap for the purpose of achieving the object of this section by 31 December 2024. [...] Existing water accounts lack essential features of basic water accounting, such as double-entry accounting, whereby the account tracks the full water balance including water extracted from the water source and the water remaining in the water source.