This is a book review of Cry me a river: the tragedy of the Murray-Darling Basin, by Margaret Simons, published in 2021 by Black Inc.
This essay tells the fraught story of the Murray-Darling Basin. At the heart, it is a story of environmental failure of the river due to mismanagement of water, but it is so much more than that. Margaret Simons weaves a story almost as long as the Murray River itself — encompassing constitutional, scientific, geographical, economic, social and political dimensions of this complex issue. This review will attempt to summarise a few key challenges apart from the political debate — the types of challenges which cannot be adequately captured by a political soundbite or sensationalist media article.
The competing interests of stakeholders — farmers, the environment and water engineers — on the issue of water management, has been present for over 100 years in Australia. The founding fathers deliberately sidestepped the issue, leaving it up to the states to decide water management in Section 100 of the constitution. One of the great paradoxes is that the landmark release of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, while attempting to fairly allocate water between farmers and the environment in a scientific way, has caused even more controversy and is close to being abandoned by New South Wales.
Part of the reason for this, is the impact necessarily uncertain scientific modelling on the social fabric. The Basin is so large, and the effects of the weather and climate so crucial yet variable from year-to-year, that any model is inexact. David Pearce, an economist brought in to perform cost-benefit analysis remarks: “I think all they can do is experiment [on water allocations]… to understand what happens, and adjust accordingly”. Simons counters:
But how do you tell people that it is necessary to experiment on them, on their self-image and livelihood?
This is a prescient reminder, I think, to all of us who work with models — to negotiate the need for exactitude knowing the uncertain nature of any model—and that above all we should consider the communication to the people behind our numbers, and the lives we affect by our analysis.
A key issue in the political debate has been the amount of water allocated to the environment. Simons eloquently captures the “politics, policy and management [colliding] … in a place the water engineers refer to as the Barmah Choke”, a narrow point in the Murray River “in a redgum forest between Tocumwal and Echuca”. In a great irony,
Some locals claim that the [Barmah Forest] is suffering, because it is not as they remember it [in their own lifetimes]. This is taken as proof that the environment is being given too much water… Swirepik [The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder] says the Barmah-Millewa forest is in better shape than it has been in for generations; it is one of the healthiest sites in the whole system.
Simons clearly shows that ‘restoring’ the Murray river to its ‘natural’ state has no clear answers.
This essay methodically explains the complex issues of water management in Australia — including further issues such as floodplain harvesting, fish diebacks and crop choice. More importantly, a gigantic political, scientific and environmental challenge is humanised as Simons travels through the Australian landscape from Queensland to South Australia, finally arriving at the river’s mouth:
Standing on the highest point of Hindmarsh Island in Lake Alexandria, you can get a view of of the great sheet of lake, of seaspray rising from ocean, of paddocks and the toytown of Goolwa on the mainland and the Adelaide Hills in the distance.
The evocative storytelling, the clear illustration of the issues, and, above all, the journalistic rigour makes this a must-read. 5/5.
