How water buyback rows could sink the Murray-Darling Basin Plan

Designed to correct more than 150 years of mismanagement and environmental degradation, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which includes water and environmental infrastructure projects and water buybacks, cost $11.4 billion over almost 20 years. Currently, the region is facing a major drought and the federal government wants to accelerate increasingly divisive water buybacks to meet volume targets aimed at improving environmental water flows.

The original bipartisan approach to the issue has collapsed and become politically effective: a lightning rod for a multitude of often legitimate regional grievances.