Water inquiry blasts CSIRO for allowing report to be altered

A federal water reform agency “improperly pressured” Australia’s top science agency to alter sections of its report on water management in the country’s biggest farming region, a South Australian inquiry has said.

The inquiry found that the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation had agreed to change parts of its report on the economic and environmental benefits of buying back irrigation licences to return water to drought-affected rivers and wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin.

The final report by the SA royal commission into water management in the region blasts CSIRO for allowing its science to be used in a “misleading” way by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.