Talk:Murray–Darling basin

Production
It is not unusal that an area of 42% of the countries farmland, produces 40% of the countries food. But what about the cotton and other farm produce that comes out of this region? What about the portion of farmland used for on-farm forestry? That would help identify that in Australian terms, excluding current conditions, this region is quite productive.Garrie 02:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)



number of species vandalism ?
I am not an expert, but I doubt the several hundred million fish-species. Long ago the article stated 34, but did not include a reference .... If someone has the info to fix this nonsense, that would be great ! nice article beyond that so far, but i cant take it too serious due to stated blunder —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.53.155.86 (talk) 07:54, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Salt
The commercialized salt from this area should be mentioned. Badagnani (talk) 06:56, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Consensus
Hi all,

I'd like to use a different word then 'claimed' when citing the aims of the basin plan. It has been changed from the original wording - I have tried my best to think and write better wording and make the statement more neutral but others disagree. I am just trying to form consensus on what wording the article could use in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

The article could use 1.The MDBA state that The Basin Plan is aiming to: or 2.The Basin Plan is claimed to:. I am happy to use whatever is best for the article. My 'vote' is for 1.

I will revert the sentence back to the original wording until a consensus is formed. Thank you all for your help and ideas.

CheersCanberraBulldog (talk) 11:57, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi all,

Please forgive the clumsy efforts of a Wikipedia newbie :-) I came across this page whilst looking to find the source of the longest river in Australia. This article appears to me to have such a pro-irrigator bias in terms of the selection of 'news' references (re-issues of Barnably Joyce's press releases and blatantly politically biased articles from Victorian Farmers Federation), even the hyperlink to the Basin Plan actually linking to a lobby group withour acknowledgement.

Anyway it motivated me to sign up - and I declare my own left leaning bias, of which I will be mindfull when aiming to assist with editing.

I agree with your first option - "The MDBA states that The Basin Plan is aiming to..." I also think it is appropriate to identify the Basin Plan link as a lobby group (and a very clever one!)

Cheers Steve

Stevenoosa (talk) 10:56, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Steve. Thanks for your comments. Given your labelling of the basinplan site as a lobby group, can we label all the government sites as lobby groups too? After all, the government has a policy position, doesn't it? Or does marking links as "lobby" groups only apply to links with content that you disagree with? I suspect the environmental lobby are far more "clever" and much better resourced than the representatives of a bunch of poor rural communities coming off 10 years of drought. Sorry for the tone of the my comments but the views of rural communities are marginalised enough without having the likes of people from Fitzroy, Balmain and yes, Noosa declare those views as somehow beyond the pale.  I won't be restoring the content again (that would be edit warring but this article (and Murray-Darling Basin Authority should be written from a neutral point of view, not the government's point of view. The MDBA is no less biased than the VFF. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 11:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Matt. Your own bias is demonstrated in your response which I do respect as valid. You repeat a number of discursive statements which are not necessarily 'true' (for example - 'the views of rural communities are marginalised enough', 'the environmental lobby are far more "clever" and much better resourced than the representatives of a bunch of poor rural communities coming off 10 years of drought'). I think this bias is eveident in this article hence my concern about its 'neutrality' in its current form.

The Basin Plan link was deliberately hijacked by some lobby group presenting the site as an official link (which is how I ended up following it). I think the link in this article needs an alert to the reader that this is not an official site.

Stevenoosa (talk) 23:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

List of rivers
I am wondering why the list in the section Rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin is formatted the way it is, with double indents for ever second river? - Shiftchange (talk) 12:12, 13 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Ideally, the indents should mark the branching heirarchy of the river system. So Murray should be at the top.. Cesiumfrog (talk) 14:01, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Missing from "Native Fauna"
Wot about native birds? Old_Wombat (talk) 09:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Borders
Which are the basins that border this one? Is there a list and map somewhere of all of the non-interconnected freshwater systems of the island continent? Other than the great dividing range, what are the geographic features that produce the boundaries of this basin, and over what span of geological history have they done so? Which are the native species of this basin, how well distrubed are they within and how unique are they without? Cesiumfrog (talk) 13:56, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Gigalitre to cubic kilometre conversion
I'm just wondering whether it isn't a bit of an overkill to convert gigalitres to cubic kilometres. They're both metric units. The conversion is trivial: 1,000 GL = 1 km3. It might perhaps be useful for the first conversion to include cubic kilometres to help readers picture the volumes involved but do we need every gigalitre value to be converted into cubic kilometres? I suggest we choose one (gigalitres, cubic kilometres or maybe even teralitres) and stick with it and if we must convert, do so once only. (P.S. this isn't about the acre-foot conversion: keep these). Jimp 03:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Dr. Quiggin's comment on this article
Dr. Quiggin has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"The article barely mentions irrigated agriculture, which is crucial in understanding both the importance of the Basin and the management problems that gave rise to the Basin Plan. A substantial section on this topic is essential"

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Quiggin has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Schrobback, Peggy & Adamson, David & Quiggin, John C., 2009. "Turning Water into Carbon: Carbon sequestration vs. water flow in the Murray-Darling Basin," 2009 Conference (53rd), February 11-13, 2009, Cairns, Australia 47616, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:12, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 7 external links on Murray–Darling basin. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121113212624/http://download.mdba.gov.au/altered-PBP/APBP-Proposed-Basin-Plan-20120806.pdf to http://download.mdba.gov.au/altered-PBP/APBP-Proposed-Basin-Plan-20120806.pdf
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20120917131741/http://www.vff.org.au/newsite/policy_issues/murray_darling_basin_plan.php to http://www.vff.org.au/newsite/policy_issues/murray_darling_basin_plan.php
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110706113325/http://www.wgga.com.au/news/pdf/WGGA%20Basin%20Plan%20Response%20-%2013%20Oct%202010.pdf to http://www.wgga.com.au/news/pdf/WGGA%20Basin%20Plan%20Response%20-%2013%20Oct%202010.pdf
 * Added tag to http://www.wetrivers.unsw.edu.au/Murray-Darling_Basin_Plan_Scientific_Consensus_statement_11_3_10.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060829211431/http://www.dwlbc.sa.gov.au/murray/rivercond/drought.html to http://www.dwlbc.sa.gov.au/murray/rivercond/drought.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100925122333/http://mdba.gov.au/basin_plan to http://www.mdba.gov.au/basin_plan
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100926035651/http://mdba.gov.au/services/publications/more-information?publicationid=35 to http://www.mdba.gov.au/services/publications/more-information?publicationid=35
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101015032343/http://thebasinplan.mdba.gov.au/guide/ to http://thebasinplan.mdba.gov.au/guide/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 16:12, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Precision
". . . The basin is 3375 km in length, with the Murray River being 2508 km long. . . . Most of the 1061469 km2 basin is flat, low-lying and far inland, and receives little direct rainfall."

Where do these ridiculously precise numbers come from? Doug butler (talk) 02:32, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I was wondering the same thing (and a bit weirdly at the same time). The lengths don't even seem to match the ones further down the article. I've seen estimates of the basin area as low as 1.03 million and 1.06 million would be the largest I've seen. The discharge figure looks way too high as well. If there were no dams or irrigation the highest flow in the system would be more like 460 cumecs around Wentworth and 390 cumecs at the mouth. Adavidson99 (talk) 04:02, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

2018-19 fish kills
The recent fish kill has been tragic but is one of thousands that have occurred since records began. I was thinking the article perhaps gives undue weight to the most recent event simply because of media coverage. I have also deleted the incorrect statement, attributed to the South Australian Royal Commission, that the fish kill was caused by maladministration of government officials. The RC did not examine the fish kills. From page 29 of the Report: "The shocking fish kill in the vicinity that occurred in the second week of January 2019 had, as at the date of writing, yet to be examined as to causes, results, implications and preventability." &#10022; JH &#10022; 01:45, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree. The paragraph talks about Murray Darling basin fish kill, but is cited to an article that only talks about the Darling River near the Menindie Lakes, not Lake Hume last month or the widespread (Mildura-Echuca) Murray River and tributaries black water event in 2011, Bulloo River 2012 and any number of other events. Perhaps it would be better to have a paragraph talking about the causes and effects of black water events in general, rolled in with cycles of drought and flood and the impact of "taming" the river.--Scott Davis Talk 05:19, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

added link
hi all, I have added a link to the page to 'The (Great) Cumbung Swamp', this link appears red as the page is currently under review. Thanks Lhick21 (talk) 00:21, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Murray-Darling Basin Authority
Hi everyone, I was looking over this page and the Basin Authority page, and I think that the "Murray-Darling Basin Initiative" section on this page should have a link for "Main Article: Murray-Darling Basin Authority". My reasoning for this is that the authority page has a much more comprehensive breakdown of the MDB initiative/plan. If you look at the Authority page, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan section has a lot more information than this page's section of the same name. So, I think it would be good to provide a link at this section to the article with more information. Thoughts? Apathyash (talk) 22:11, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

2020 updates
The article should be updated with new information:


 * https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-03/the-mystery-of-the-murray-darlings-vanishing-flows/12612166?nw=0
 * https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/01/irrigators-given-subsidies-under-4bn-murray-darling-scheme-drew-more-water-study-finds

First Nations
The 'original inhabitants' section needs improvement. It implies that all First Nations people from the area are now extinct, which is harmful and untrue. Please seek guidance, and provide links to local Aboriginal History education groups. There could be some incredible information about traditional land care and management as well. Thank you. 139.218.103.213 (talk) 01:52, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

River Heights Table
Ahh, g'day: If I'm reading it correctly the tributaries table lists the Goulburn River being 100mts high at its confluence with the Murray while the Campaspe is listed as being 123mts. Given the Campaspe is downstream of the Goulburn these figures make no sense. Also, during the recent floods, the Murray at Echuca got to around 96mts AHD; this would make the Goulburn height seem incorrect. Cheers. 113.11.187.104 (talk) 03:06, 12 January 2023 (UTC)