More than a ‘voice’: Indigenous transmission in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan

Abstract

The Uluru Statement (2017) has recently focused attention on Indigenous state relations as an Indigenous ‘voice’ to government. For decades, Indigenous peoples in Australia have sought a meaningful voice in settler state environmental planning and management regimes, with limited success. Little attention has been paid to what constitutes an effective Indigenous voice. I conceptualise Australian Indigenous environmental planning and management as a dual deliberative system where Indigenous groups must transmit their messages into settler institutions and processes. I analyse the democratic quality of this transmission between two Indigenous deliberative forums, Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations and the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations and the commonwealth Murray-Darling Basin Authority in developing the controversial Murray-Darling Basin Plan (2012). These deliberative forums improve the transmission quality of Indigenous environmental discourses. They are more than a voice; they are a democratic innovation which goes beyond the limits of state ‘inclusion’ of Indigenous environmental values.