Harvard University professor John Briscoe is a former senior water advisor at the World Bank and one of the world’s leading water experts.
He led the international “peer review” of the MDBA’s original Guide to the Basin Plan.
In a February 24 2011 submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, “Provisions of the Water Act 2007” inquiry, Professor Briscoe denounced the Water Act 2007 and the political process surrounding it as a “political deception”, driven by the (orchestrated) rise of city-based “environmental vote”.
He characterised the plan process as “we will run the numbers and the science behind closed doors and then tell you the result”, and reported, “In all my years of public service, often in very sensitive environments, I have never been subjected to such an elaborate ‘confidentiality’ process that embodied in the preparation of the Guide to Basin Plan”.
Mr Briscoe urged the government to scrap Malcolm Turnbull’s Water Act and start again, this time including input from farmers and experts who had made the Murray-Darling Basin a world-class model of efficient water management.
This information was printed in the Australian Alert Service, official newsletter of the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia.
Jeff Davy,
Katunga.
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