Unfinished Business: Completing the Mudmap on the Riverbed – The Legal Lacuna in the Tri-State Area of the River Murray

Abstract

With the approaching centenary of the Victorian-South Australian border litigation, the necessity of restoring and maintaining river flows in the Murray-Darling Basin river system including the equitable allocation of rights to those flows, and the failure of the four states and the Commonwealth to agree on the future co-operative administration of the Basin, the authors offer their resolution of the ‘missing’ border in the tri-state area of Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia in the locale of Mildura-Wentworth-Renmark where the three states abut. The resolution of the missing border is essential to the proper exercise of spatial or territorial jurisdiction. Although of small consequence for the past 150 years the time is approaching when this issue must be resolved: it is ‘unfinished business’.