The Findings and Recommendations section of the draft report by the Productivity Commission, Market Mechanisms for Recovering Water, details the successes and failures of the water recovery plan for the Murray-Darling.  It is highly critical of the expenditure of billions of taxpayers dollars by the Basin States on huge and unnecessary infrastructure projects. 

The States continue to ignore the calls from their electorates to abandon these white elephant constructions; perhaps they will take heed of the opinion of the Commonwealth Government's independent research and advisory body on issues affecting the welfare of Australians, particularly the following:

DRAFT FINDING 6.4

Funding infrastructure upgrades is generally not a cost-effective way for governments to recover water for the environment. It is also unlikely to be an effective or efficient means of sustaining irrigation communities.

DRAFT RECOMMENDATION 6.2

Rigorous approval processes should be applied to all projects under the Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure program. In particular, projects should generally only be approved where the cost per megalitre for water entitlements recovered is similar to the market price. Premiums above this price should only be paid in exceptional circumstances. 

Commissioner, Neil Byron, is on record as stating, “There are cases where governments have paid not only 20 or 30 per cent more, but sometimes three or four times more than the market price to recover water through very large, complicated infrastructure projects”.