 Thanks, David, and thanks everybody for coming along. Can I first of all say how fantastic it is to be here at Outlook again? It's much better to come as a speaker than it is to come as the Executive Director of A-Bears. It's always a nerve-wracking time because people that sit up here often don't turn up on time like I didn't do today. But secondly, can I just acknowledge and recognise the Ngunnawal people who are the traditional owners of the land on which we meet? Can I also acknowledge the 40 Aboriginal nations that comprise the Murray-Darling Basin and pay my respects to their elders, past and present? David said I'd started in July. In this job, I actually started in January. So I've been in the role for essentially two months. And rather than give you a really erudite and deep understanding of what the basin plans about, what I wanted to really do is try and share with you some of the things I've just learned since picking this up and it's more by way of a general introduction, just a bit of a reminder as to why we have the plan and why I think it's so important to stick with the plan. So apologies for those of you who are wanting detailed explanations of the act and the plan and things like that. You'll have to ask David Parker for that. But moving right along, he said pressing the button firmly, just to remind you about the complexity and the size of what we're dealing with. Four states, one territory, two million people, provides water for over three million people, 40 Aboriginal nations, 30,000 wetlands, more than 35 endangered bird species, more than 16 endangered mammals, 49% of Australia's irrigated farms, $18.6 billion worth of agricultural production, of which 7.1 billion is from irrigation. It's a really iconic part of our history. It's an iconic part of the country. It's a large part of the country. So why do we need a plan simply because successive governments over a long period of time have over-allocated water entitlements in relation to the Murray Darling itself and the industries and the communities that are supported by the Murray Darling Basin Plan don't have a sustainable future unless we were to address that over-allocation. The expectation is, of course, that inflow our storages and inflow into the basin is going to reduce over time. So confronted by those two things, essentially I guess the way I'd look at it is that the people that live, work in the basin, enjoy playing in the basin, living in it. They're sort of loving it to death and we can't accommodate the growth in a sustainable way. So successive governments have been trying to reform water, not just in the basin but across the country, and there's been this long history. There's a lot of reform fatigue that comes from that, but this is simply just to sort of run you through. There's been 1994, COAG agreed a cap on water diversions, National Water Initiative in 2004, Water Act in 2007, and a basin plan that tries to establish a sustainable future for all of the players was introduced in 2012. It does lots of things, the basin plan, most of which, unfortunately, has been written into legislation, so it makes it very hard to change. The Murray Darling Basin Authority gets blamed for a lot of that. But one of the things that I've struggled with in trying to explain to the people I've met so far is that the triple bottom line nature of the plan itself. There's been a lot of accusation that the governments and the authority don't take a triple bottom line approach. Essentially, where we've landed in terms of setting a sustainable extraction out of the basin was based on making a triple bottom line judgement. There's lots and lots of reports written. There was 22 specifically written in relation to the potential costs and benefits of the basin plan. They aren't perfect, those studies, some of them were done by A-Bears, so they would have to be good, of course, but others were done by people with a wider range of expertise and existed in A-Bears at the time. I guess the point is it was the best available information that was around, and it did cover social, economic and environmental aspects. At the same time as the plan was put in place, there was also a commitment to recover the water. And so this is not a role for the MDBA. We get blamed for taking water away from people. But ultimately it's a government role and the Australian government recognising the scale of the structural adjustment was occurring, putting in place some fairly significant investments, some of which are sort of listed on the slide here, but there's since 2007 and 2008, there's been $5.3 billion invested in a combination of infrastructure and buybacks, $3 billion in infrastructure and $2.3 billion in buybacks. The government has capped the amount that will be bought back. And there's been funds also set aside for so-called supply measures which try to improve the way in which we're using the water so that if you put in a weir and you flood a particular environmental site in a targeted way, you don't have to use as much water. You don't have, you don't therefore need as much water in order to be able to achieve the environmental outcomes. And so that's pretty important. That remains a focus and there's some funds set aside for that. There's funds set aside for constraints measures to again try and make it easier to water environmental sites with less water and particularly $1.5 billion dedicated to so-called efficiency measures which are about lining, things like lining irrigation channels so that you reduce your losses and some of that water can be returned to the environment and it doesn't necessarily impact on the economic performance of the people who are using that water for consumptive uses. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that there's been a triple bottom line adjustment and there's been assistance provided. You can argue whether that's enough and whether it's been directed in the right way. But it was there. I think the other thing, and this is a really busy slide and I'm not expecting anyone to be able to read it in great detail but really from, it's really trying to, the message I'm trying to get across here is if you start on the left hand side at 2012 you have the plan introduced. If you go to the right you've got up to 2024 and there's a series of things that we have to do that are required under the Act or the plan and there's a whole framework of other stuff in there that goes beyond just setting the diversion limits. It goes to things like environmental watering strategies, market trading, etc. There's a whole lot of stuff in there which I won't go into but the point I really want to try and make is that in making this change, making this huge structural adjustment for the irrigation industry, for the farming sector and for the communities that depend on it, the governments have deliberately planned in a long period of time to adjust. And that's a good thing because adjustment over short periods of time is really quite expensive and difficult for the people who are going through it. At the same time it's a difficult thing because what it does is continue that long reform process. There's a lot of fatigue in relation to that reform but we're making steady progress. This, and I guess the other thing I want to stress about this chart is, again it's a bit hard to read but we're, the specific things planned in here to review how we're going and to change things as we move along. It's an adaptive plan because the information that was based, that the plan was based on in 2012 is as good as it was at the time. As time goes on we learn more, we learn by doing and there's more research being done at the same time. It's an adaptive plan. And so for example in 2016 we have the opportunity to go and have a look at the northern part of the basin and make some adjustments if the science and the economics suggest that we should. And also in 2016 we're considering how best to deal with those sustainable diversion limit adjustment measures, the infrastructure work that might be able to reduce the socioeconomic impact of taking water away from productive uses. And I guess that's what I'm really trying to stress with this slide is that it's a long period of time before things bite. Really the sustainable diversion limits come into effect in 2019. Nevertheless the pain of the structural adjustment, the pain of the change whether you're selling water or you're putting in new infrastructure on your farm, that is significant. The pain of what happens in a town that is dependent upon expenditure from the farm sector is significant and is enduring and started from the start. So if you've got the philosophy that this is an adaptive plan, that it's a triple bottom line starting point, monitoring, evaluation and reporting on how it's going is critical. We need to make sure that we understand because we don't have complete knowledge. No one has complete knowledge. And so we want to know what the impacts have been and will be and do we need to change? We have a process of annual reporting. There's the base and plan annual report and I'm waving it around here because I left it on the table over there. But we put that out a couple of weeks ago. It didn't go down well in some communities. And in fact I think some of the residents of Menindy were pretty keen to burn it because they're very unhappy with how things are going at the moment. But the point is there's an annual report that comes out. There's also a report that we're obliged to do every five years and that's due next year where we do a triple bottom line report on how it's going. What have we learned? And one of our challenges is to tease apart what are the impacts of the plan from what else is going on in the rural economy. So what I'm trying to do for the remainder of my time, David, is just share a little bit about what we had in our annual report and a little bit about what we've learned to date. And you'll see in going through this that it's we're just touching the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we have and that there's more to come. But just to give you a flavor and try and convey the message that we're making gradual progress. In terms of water recovery, the big message there that on the left-hand side of the slide there's a number which might be a bit hard to read but it says we've got 1,951 gigalitres of the 2,750 gigalitres that are required in order to get to a sustainable level of diversion. There's the Commonwealth government and the state government's actually are responsible for covering this water. We're responsible for trying to report on it and understand the impacts of that. The point I'd make though, if you think about that number, that's 20% less water than was being taken out of the system on average at the start of before the plan. 20%. Now, whether that's bought or whether that's saved through the infrastructure measures I mentioned early on, that is a significant adjustment in anyone's terms. It means a change from current practice and it's very understandable that a lot of industry and communities are going through that change. With 71% of the way there in the slide really just shows that 1,163 gigalitres have been purchased, 577 gigalitres of infrastructure projects have turned water to the environment and on it goes and we'll continue to report about that. We've seen some early signs on the environmental side. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority is responsible for setting a basin-wide environmental watering strategy in collaboration with the basin states and the experts. It's the responsibility of people like David Papps, the Commonwealth Environment Water Holder and the state water holders to actually implement it, but we're beginning to see some good signs and some good outcomes as we learn how to go about watering. This happens to be a picture of some Moira grass growing in the Barma forest and following a watering event in 2014. That part of the forest was actually supported by some watering that occurred earlier prior to the basin plan, but the fact that it's there demonstrates that putting in place watering regimes at the right place at the right time can make a difference. Similarly, in terms of water birds, birds generally, it's been able to maintain some of the watering that has been done has maintained core wetland habitat for thousands of birds and including 20 species in the guider wetlands, the Macquarie marshes, the lower Loughlin and the Hadar lakes. And this is really important because this goes to some of the other values in the plan. So this sort of event and these sort of protections underpin tourism, underpin recreation and underpin the industries in the basin that participate that underpin the enjoyment that people get in the basin, both indigenous and others in terms of enjoying the benefits of the river. And it's really important that we continue to maintain those values as well. Similarly on fish, nice photo of a cod, I think, but we've seen some really good breeding outcomes for native fish, Murray cod, golden perch and silver perch. And in addition to recovering water that we've also seen the completion of fishways from the hume to the Murray mouth. And that's also showing, that's another way of making sure that we're improving the environmental health of the river. On the economic side, I'm gonna have to get better at this. So one of the key reasons, and one of the rationales for the agriculture industry supporting the plan and joining with governments in the bipartisan support across all of the basin, governments in the plan is that there is the promise that will provide investment certainty. And if you've got certainty, then you've got a sustainable industry. And with all of the reforms that have been going on, there wasn't that much certainty. So one of the key objectives behind the plan is to provide that certainty. Know that sure things are gonna change in the future, but it'll be done in a measured and well-informed and scientifically based way. So what we've seen is some, thanks David, some significant investment in the cotton industry in the Murrumbidgee. Maybe that's due to the plan, maybe it's not, I don't know, but I guess what we're trying to do is tease out some of these effects. Valuating investment in the rice and dairy industries, similarly in fruit and dairy processing. We've seen the growth in almond plantations in the Murrumbidgee in the Loughlin. We've seen other investment, other parts of the economy investing. So private hospitals and Griffiths, freight lines, et cetera, are they because of the plan or not? These are some of the things we're trying to tease out for our report next year. But they are also signs that there are some confidence that populations are growing in some parts of the community. And of course there's the actual pulse of investment that governments have made that I've already talked about. In our annual report, we have this photo of this gentleman, Joe Ventra, who grows lemons near Cobram in Victoria. He received a grant of $126,000 to upgrade his farm's irrigation system and move from overhead sprinklers to dual line drippers with auto valves and moisture sensors. I wish I knew more about that. But it's just an example and there's just an anecdote that there is investment happening in the basin. But of course, as I've already said, with every adjustment, positive or negative, there's going to be pressures. So this is a photo from our annual report of Danilaquan, I think. And we've got a couple of case studies in there about the towns that are struggling, that were struggling before the introduction of the basin plan, are likely to continue to struggle. And as I said before, taking 20% of the water away is a significant impact, no matter how it's done. And so we're making this change when there's a lot else happening in the agricultural economy. Balance sheets are still recovering from the millennium drought. We've got movements in exchange rate, movements in commodity prices, lots and lots of substitution and movement, courtesy of the water market, which is an efficient way of allocating a scarce resource. That's changing the nature of agriculture in the basin. We've got to try and figure out what you can claim or what's the responsibility of the plan and what's not in making our reports. But I think it's safe to say that people are going through some pretty tough times at the moment and there's expectations of tough times to come. Here's some agricultural employment trying to sort out what's happening with that. How much of the decline in employment within the Murray-Darling basin in agriculture? How much of that's due to the plan? How much is due to anything else happening? How much of it's due to the productivity gains that farmers are making by removing high costs such as wage costs out of their business plans? This simply shows that from about 2001-02, employment's falling, probably part of the monium drought. The first little flag there is a green flag is when water recovery began, which is pre-basin plan and the second green flag is when the basin plan started. There's been decline. What's that from? You'd expect that removing water from the agriculture economy would be contributing to that, but there's other things going on as well. There's been a lot of chat and a lot of debate about temporary water prices and they've been particularly high in recent times, not as high as they were during the drought, but this plot shows on the bottom it's got the percentage allocation of water that's been announced by the various governments as of January, so it goes zero to 100%. And then above, the vertical axis is the average price. And what you can see is it different, strange enough, as a lapsed economist, even I know that when supply is short, price goes up. And so what we're showing here is that if you look at 2014-15, the prices at that time, we've got about a 50% allocation. They're a little bit higher than roughly similar levels of allocation in the past, so there's possibly been a contribution as a result of the recovery of water to date as a result of that, but again, we're gonna try and figure that out for our reporting. Some other changes that we're trying to track as well, this is a bit complicated, but it shows rises in yearly steps, the movement in water prices over time. And you can see in the two years, 2010, 2011, as people are coming out of the millennium drought, that the price starts up high and then falls over time. What you see post-2012, you see that that sort of signal's reversed, and you see that the price ramps up in the early part of the year and then falls off. And we think that is because farmers have sort of changed behavior as a result of the market being in existence and as a result of their experience with the millennium drought. They seem to want to manage the risk in a different way than they did in the past, preferring to buy water earlier in the year. So that's a snapshot of some of the things that are in the plan. I've tried to articulate the purpose of it. Our role having created and advised governments on the plan and then governments having taken a separate decision and added things to and from the plan as a result of our analysis. Our role over the next few years is changing from the proponents of the plan and advising government in relation to the plan into monitoring, measuring, and in some senses regulating what's happening in the basin as we move towards that more stable circumstance. We're going to be certainly focused on this year in things like the Northern Basin Review, the SDL adjustment measure that has to kick in, continuing on with environmental monitoring and evaluation and working with the states and territories, territory to accredit their water resource plans. So I think we're moving from sort of advisor to government more into that regulatory review space because this is an adaptive plan. So if I wanted to, if you've fallen asleep because of the monotony of my presentation, just walk away with these messages which is what I was trying to say, that water reform's tough. People are really hurting when you go and talk to some of the irrigation dependent communities. It's nevertheless worthwhile. We can't go back to where we were prior to having a plan. I've not met a person yet who said, let's get rid of a plan. They might argue about the incidents of the pain. They might argue about elements of it, but I haven't heard anyone as yet so that we should go back to where we started. Because it's a long-term plan, because there's time for adjustment, it's important that we stay the course and that's hard when there's structural reform of the scale we're talking about and we're possibly heading into quite a dry period. The other message I wanted to leave you is that collectively, and it's not just the Murray-Darling Basin Authority because we're really reporting on behalf of the governments, we are meeting the milestones, we are getting there. And whilst we might be able to get there in a more consultative and informed way, that we can always improve there. It's still worthwhile staying the course. Thanks very much for listening. APPLAUSE