(1) Well-Defined Reform Objectives

The *Water Act 2007* has well-defined, but high-level objectives. The 2012 Basin Plan gives effect to this Act and key environmental targets to be achieved beyond 2019, as detailed in the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's (MDBA) basin-wide environmental watering strategy. Key environmental targets include: (1) maintain base flow levels at 60% of natural flows; (2) enforce environmentally sustainable limits on the quantities of surface water and groundwater that may be taken from the basin water resources; (3) increase overall flow by 10% more into the Barwon–Darling, 30% more into the River Murray and 30–40% more to the Murray mouth which opens to the sea 90% of the time to an average annual depth of one meter; (4) export 2 million tons of salt per year to the Southern Ocean; and (5) improve bird breeding with up to 50% more breeding events for colonial nesting species and a 30–40% increase in nests and broods for other waterbirds [40]. While there have been some environmental improvements in specific locations [41], none of these five key objectives at a basin scale, as of the start of 2019, have been realized [36,42–46].
