Does public consultation truly end? the Murray-Darling Basin experience

Abstract

Over the last decade Australian governments at all levels have been changing governance arrangements for the management of natural resources and the environment. Government has been devolving some of its power and responsibility to the community to manage regionally significant ecological regions. Communities have, through their actions, demanded this power from their government with the establishment of movements such as Landcare. Individual community members now have an opportunity to make real, observable environmental changes to their region. Where a centralised Federal or State government does not address local issues with the same sense of ownership or sensitivity. With the partial sale of Telstra the Federal government established the Natural Heritage Trust, which in its first incarnation was designed to fund small on-ground natural resource management projects. This action has empowered the community to undertake the work that it feels is appropriate in its region. It removed government from the delivery function of small environmentally beneficial works and given the community greater responsibility. It is within this changing attitude by government that the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) 1 operates to manage natural resources throughout the Murray- Darling Basin. The MDBC acknowledges that natural resource management is about people and their acceptance of suitable management regimes. To ensure that the community has a voice the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council established a Community Advisory Committee to keep it informed of current community thinking on issues of natural resource management and provide recommendations on potential activities. This involvement of the community in the governance of natural resources is a recurring theme of the work of the MDBC. The community is involved to varying degrees of formality (and success) in the development of numerous crossborder, Basin wide strategies and operational plans. The two case studies contained in this report which were run via the MDBC on behalf of its partner governments show how the community can be engaged and what are the long term effects of engaging the community on issues of interest. The case studies show that the government when engaging the community will need to consider what happens with an engaged community once the ‘consultation’ has finished.