Has Australia dropped the ball on water reform?

In our December 2015 editorial, ‘Let’s not drop the ball on water’ (Baldwin et al. 2015), we reflected on the substantial progress made on water reform under the guidance of Australia’s National Water Commission (NWC). We queried whether, given the NWC’s demise, there would be a continued nationwide commitment to a sustainable water agenda. Recent revelations by the ABC’s Four Corners1 about irrigators circumventing the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) Plan and associated licence conditions, which was allegedly condoned by the NSW government demonstrate fundamental governance problems affecting water allocations in Australia.