ABSTRACT
Policy-making is frequently described as a response to problems, but the problems which policy workers address are naturally occurring phenomena. Environmental policy in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) offers an interesting illustration of the emergence of both a policy issue and of the construction of an institutional framework for addressing it, in the course of which the Murray–Darling Basin emerged as a location for policy work. The MDB extends across more than one million square kilometres of inland south-east Australia and supports approximately 40 per cent of Australia’s rural economy including 75 per cent of all irrigation, is home to just under two million people and supplies much of the water used by another million in South Australia. The initial moves were to bring the River Murray Commission arrangements into line with the standard model for intergovernmental management in Australia, with a number of bureaucratic committees crowned by a ministerial council.
