The well-being of 2200 basin farmers and irrigators has been profiled by University of Canberra researcher Jacki Schirmer over four years.

Dr Schirmer discussed 2013 findings during the 24^th annual Mann Lecture at La Trobe University, a public event held at the Wodonga campus to honour Johnathan Mann.

“As a whole, about 13 per cent of those in the basin feel neutral about the effect the plan has had, 25 per cent say it’s been negative and 18 per cent say positive,” she said.

“People feeling their voices haven’t been heard drives a lot of the negative perceptions.

“In conversations with irrigators who have sold water titles back to the government, some have said it was stressful, others say it was the best thing they’d done.

“We’re seeing a lot of competing social and economic assessments.

“Some say it’s all positive or all negative … my personal view is that they all tell us relevant things, and it is somewhere in the middle.”

Deniliquin and the Berrigan/Corowa areas were high towards the top of the list of those most concerned – more than 80 per cent and 50 per cent of responders respectively said it had a negative impact.

“There are winners and losers in every action we take and basin plan is no different,” Dr Schirmer said.

“We can test those claims about the impacts – as soon as they do the second Census data release I’ll be doing that profiling and lining up that data against those perceptions.”

Murray Darling Basin Freshwater Research Centre director Nick Bond said the basin had recently experienced its driest September on record.

“Two thousand and ten and 2016 were wet years, but the years in between have been significantly drier than the long-term average,” he said.

“The impacts of drought in some areas were drastic … some ecosystems have undergone massive declines as a result of a number of factors – not just water use.

“A five-year monitoring program established in 2015 is using multiple indicators and is focusing on seven river regions across the basin.”

Asked about allegations raised by a Four Corners investigation aired in July, Dr Bond said the claims had hurt confidence in the plan.

“I think the volumes of water being talked about were significant,” he said.

“I think the bigger concern there is what it did in terms of trust – there’s a lot of debate about the pros and cons.

“They (the discussions) need to occur in good faith and the program really challenged that, and it will take some time for that faith and trust to be restored.”

Dr Schirmer said balancing the environmental, economic and social outcomes for the plan was complicated, and simply taking the plan away would not solve all problems.

“Rising water prices are one of the biggest pressures facing irrigators at the moment,” she said.

“To build the future of basin communities, we need to understand all things driving social and economic change … the plan is only one of the factors.”