John Clements, a former adviser to the independent MP Tony Windsor, said he had reflected on his experience on the Northern Basin Advisory Committee (NBAC), which ran from 2012 to 2016 and concluded it was used “to rubber-stamp the ambitions of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority” to deliver a major cut to the 390GL environmental water target.
In scathing evidence to the South Australian royal commission into the Murray-Darling river system, Clements said the committee formed the view the MDBA’s modelling and data was deficient.
Yet he said the authority consistently refused to acknowledge the failings of its hydrological modelling, which did not take account of climate change, natural losses in the system and was informed by limited data on what was really happening in the river.
Inland Rivers Network 