This paper presents a new farm level microsimulation model of irrigation activity within the southern Murray-Darling Basin (sMDB), developed by ABARES on behalf of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. The model remains under ongoing development, a number of planned improvements to the model are documented in the paper.

This report recommends that the Australian government support the recommendation of the Productivity Commission to separate the Murray Darling Basin Authority into two entities: the Murray-Darling Basin Corporation, and the Basin Plan Regulator, with the regulator established as a new statutory independent authority.

This report is the first in a series that highlights how the Murray–Darling Basin Plan has increased the flow of money and water to big agribusinesses and has increased the vulnerability of everyone else in the Basin– Aboriginal people, floodplain graziers, downstream communities and small irrigators.

This report draws on over ten years of ecological monitoring undertaken, as part of the Living Murray initiative, at six priority environmental assets, on the River Murray in the southern Murray–Darling Basin.

This paper raises the issue of the construction of the Water Act from a legal perspective, specifically in the context of its use of the term environmentally sustainable level of take. That task necessarily requires consideration of how ESLT is defined, including by reference to environmental criteria, and what role social or economic outcomes should...