Submission to the Productivity Commission's Murray-Darling Basin's five-year assessment issues paper

This document is a response to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry on implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan provided as a consensus statement by five professors of water economics who signed the Murray-Darling Declaration on 5 February 2018. We provide response relevant to three key enquiry terms of reference (TOR):
1) Progress towards implementing the actions required under the Plan within legislated timeframes, including:
- the extent to which stated water recovery and other targets are on track to be
delivered within statutory timeframes; and
- the likelihood that activities and arrangements now in place will ensure that these targets and timeframes will be met.
2) Supply measures to offset the Basin Plan water recovery target of 2,750 GL by 2019, using the Sustainable Diversion Limit (SDL) adjustment mechanism;
3) Efficiency measures to recover an additional 450 GL by 2024, consistent with the Basin Plan legal requirement to achieve neutral or improved socio-economic
outcomes.
Conclusions and recommendations as summarised below. In addition, the Appendix provides a detailed review of the current water economic studies of the Basin plan (as well as a review of the key studies of the peer-reviewed water economics literature) and further documents the logic, evidence and study review basis for conclusions and recommendations.