Date: 22nd June 2026
Loddon Shire Mayor Dan Straub has called for a fundamental shift in how the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is implemented.
Speaking to Chris Eddy for an upcoming episode of VLGA Connect, Cr Straub said the current review process has become a political exercise that is ignoring both scientific evidence and the communities bearing the greatest cost.
Cr Straub, a former chair of the Murray River Group of Councils — a partnership of six Victorian councils spanning the full length of the Murray from Moira to Mildura — says the region has been engaged with Basin water issues for nearly two decades, and that the trajectory of the plan is moving in the wrong direction.
“We’ve never ever argued that the environment doesn’t need water, but we need a balanced format to deliver it where it’s needed,” Straub said. “The plan’s telling us that the environment has benefited from the water that they’ve already purchased back off landholders, and more water won’t make any significant benefits to where we’re at now — yet there’s still this ploy to take more out of that consumptive pool, away from not just irrigators, but away from town water as well.”
Cr Straub points to the removal of the socioeconomic neutrality test from the review as a critical failure, arguing that water continued to be purchased out of the consumptive pool even after the test could not be made to stack up — with direct consequences for farming communities along the Murray. He cites the closure of the Bega cheese processing facility at Strathmerton and the loss of around 300 jobs as a concrete example of the plan’s impact on regional industry.
The Mayor says the debate has now drifted away from evidence and into political point-scoring.
“It’s become a political hot potato, throwing that back and forward, without really listening to the scientific evidence and also the communities that are actually showing a direct impact,” he said. “We’ve had industries that have said they’ve got no confidence in the water market in Victoria anymore — and that takes away those jobs, those families, those kids in our schools down through our rural areas of northern Victoria.”
Loddon Shire, which sits within the Murray-Darling catchment and has an agricultural sector valued at approximately one billion dollars annually, has made individual submissions to the current review in addition to contributing to the Murray River Group’s collective submission. Straub says both submissions call for a halt to further water buybacks and a return to community and industry-led decision making.
He remains committed to working through the Murray Darling Basin Authority to achieve what he describes as positive outcomes for irrigators and regional communities — but says the window for meaningful change is now, while the review is still underway.