Engagement principles

Engaging people is an important part of developing and implementing the Basin Plan. We are working with people now to ensure we have a good Basin Plan for the future.

We have developed a strategy to guide our engagement with a broad range of stakeholders while we develop the plan. You can download a copy of our Stakeholder Engagement Strategy here.

What we want to achieve

We want to:

• increase people’s understanding of the Basin Plan issues and the Basin Plan development process
• create opportunities for people to provide relevant information to the development of the Basin Plan
• increase people’s confidence in the planning and engagement process by adhering to our engagement principles
• acknowledge and value people’s contribution to the planning process.

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Why we are engaging

We believe that through involving a wide range of people we will develop a better Basin Plan which people are better able to adapt to and implement.

Engaging with stakeholders offers us an opportunity to draw on people's knowledge, and to build support for, and involvement in, the Basin Planning process.

The way we engage and the types of activities we use will help to build stakeholder confidence in the engagement process.

Working with people will also be essential to implementing and reviewing the Basin Plan and we will refine and extend the strategy to include more activities in the future.

In addition to government policy commitments, we must consult with the Basin Officials Committee, the Basin states and the Basin Community Committee in preparing the Basin Plan.

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Who we are talking to

Our stakeholders are groups or individuals who have an interest in the development and implementation of the Basin Plan and the activities of the MDBA.

In preparing our stakeholder engagement strategy, we identified over 1,000 stakeholder groups who can be broadly grouped as follows:

• people living in the Basin and the broader Australian community
• industry, conservation, recreation and community groups
• local governments
• Indigenous Australian peoples
• Basin Community Committee
• Basin Officials Committee
• state government agencies and departments — scientific, technical and policy
• Commonwealth Government agencies and departments — scientific, technical and policy
• science and research communities.

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What is important to us when working with people

Our approach to stakeholder engagement is guided by the following principles upon which we will operate and to which we will be accountable.

We are committed to ensure that our stakeholder engagement is:

• transparent—we will engage with transparent purpose, goals, accountabilities, expectations and constraints
• inclusive and targeted — we will seek to engage with individuals and organisations that represent the full diversity of those who will be affected by the Basin Plan. We will seek to engage Indigenous Australian people and people who have English as a second language in culturally appropriate ways. We will provide opportunities for people with disabilities, including vision and hearing impaired.
• appropriate and adaptive — we will use levels and methods of engagement that suit the group being consulted and our strategy will be adaptive to feedback
• accessible and innovative – we will provide clear, accessible and comprehensive information to people in order to help them understand their engagement with us
• respectful – we will conduct engagement activities in a manner that fosters mutual respect and trust by listening to feedback and responding where possible. We will treat comments and submissions as well as collect and store information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cwlth)
• supportive — we will be sensitive to how the changes resulting from the Basin Plan impact individuals.
  

Three stages of activities

1. Release of the Guide to the proposed Basin Plan, which is a summary of the key elements of the plan to build public understanding of the draft plan.
2. Release of the draft Basin Plan, which initiates the formal 20-week consultation process.
3. Analysis of submissions following the 20-week consultation and submission process and finalising the Basin Plan.

Monitoring and evaluation

Measuring our performance in stakeholder engagement is important to us. We have developed a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess how well we are meeting our objectives. We have developed criteria to help with our ongoing evaluation and we will be asking stakeholders to provide feedback on our engagement activities to help ensure we are engaging effectively.

We have evaluated our engagement activities at both mid-2010 and early 2011.

We welcome your feedback to assist in the ongoing evaluation of our engagement activities.

Feedback, requests for information and comments can be:

emailed to engagement@mdba.gov.au

or posted to:

Murray–Darling Basin Authority GPO Box 1801 Canberra ACT 2601.

You can download a copy of our Stakeholder Engagement Strategy here.