Phillip Glyde

An authority on Babel fish

More than 1 million square kilometres spanning five states and one territory. Environmental heartland. Two million diverse stakeholders. Intense politics. The Murray-Darling Basin drains one-seventh of one of the driest continents on Earth and its management is both complicated and divisive.

So it's a revelation to hear the quietly spoken public servant charged with improving its fortunes, Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) chief executive and UNE alumnus Phillip Glyde speak with enthusiasm for the task.

"There are many interested parties - First Nations people, industry representatives, farmers, environmentalists and local government members trying to protect the fabric of their communities - and everyone is trying to do the right thing," Phillip says. "That can sometimes lead to tension, and respectfully understanding all those different perspectives and striking the right balance is really hard.

"People trying to make it work, like me, can attract criticism, but it's because so much is at stake. It's a privilege to be in the middle of all that shouting, to realise what people are going through for the benefit of future generations. It's both confronting and inspiring at the same time."

"What people are going through" is perhaps the most significant reform in the basin's history, under the Murray Darling Basin Plan developed in 2012 to improve its failing health. Phillip inherited responsibility for this most controversial of portfolios in January 2016.  It's his job to ensure the watershed bipartisan agreement - including infrastructure improvements, the delivery of environmental water, introduction of water resource plans and improved compliance measures - is delivered.

"Unfortunately, almost always, the solution will require a compromise of one kind or another," Phillip says. "But we have to find a way through these intractable problems, to equip industry and towns to better handle the future, including climate change. These are people raising families, trying to make a quid and look after their communities, but water also has been returned to the environment. The authority is seized with the importance of this opportunity and committed to working through the challenges."

Phillip joined the Australian Public Service in 1980 "in desperation" after completing the then relatively new Bachelor of Natural Resources course at UNE. "It was the only job I was offered, in the end, so I thought I would spend the year in Canberra and at least save up enough to buy a car," he says. "Forty years later, I'm still here. For me, the public service has been a fantastic experience. I haven't looked back from that disappointment of not getting a real job."

Before joining the MDBA, Phillip was Deputy Secretary at the federal Department of Agriculture, where he was variously responsible for agriculture, fisheries and forestry policy. He has worked on natural resource management, industry and environmental policies in a number of other departments, including Prime Minister and Cabinet, Environment, and Resources and Energy. Appointments overseas have also taken him to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, and the United Kingdom Cabinet Office and Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

"I've had this real breadth of experience with the Commonwealth Government, without once having to think about chucking in my job and starting a new one," Phillip says. "And my degree, which covered a range of subjects, prepared me well for what was to come. At UNE I learnt that there is never enough information to make a decision; you have to make a judgement, and the information that you do get will change over time as you learn more, so you have to be adaptable. I also learnt that you can't be an expert on everything, but the ability to translate what people are saying is what I have been doing for the past 40 years."

Indeed, the necessity for translation has often seen Phillip recall the character Arthur Dent, from his favourite work of fiction, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "Arthur has this Babel fish that he can wear as an earpiece and it allows him to instantly understand any language in the universe," Phillip says. "I have always felt that was what both my degree and my experience has enabled me to do. In government, you need to be able to speak multiple languages if you are going to survive and get things done in contested spaces. I can translate the jargon from economics, water resource management or hydrology into something meaningful for a time-poor official or cabinet minister. I could never be good enough to be the expert, but I can bring stuff together."

There have been plenty of "contested spaces" in Phillip's career - from the regional forestry agreements negotiated in the 1990s to the live animal export controversy of the 2000s - but Phillip says he has always relished "the challenge of helping to find solutions that benefit the country". At the MDBA, that is paramount.

"Over 100 years various governments have over-allocated this finite resource and now it's about taking a decision in the national interest and ensuring communities have a sustainable future," he says. "It represents a huge change for communities in the basin and will have a huge impact on agriculture, but it will mean, in the long run, that maybe those farmers' children's children will still be farming generations later. It also means we will return the rivers, environmentally, to a state where they can be there in the future, too."

Although the Australian Government has received its fair share of criticism for its handling of Murray-Darling Basin reform, Phillip believes it's unwarranted. "Our water policy is the envy of many nations," he says. "Very few governments have bought back water to give it to the environment, at the expense of farmers, and add to that the fact that we have put a dollar value on water, that we don't have warfare across state boundaries and lots of illegal behaviour.

"Things are not constant; we live in a precarious part of the world in terms of our environment. There will always be challenges and it's hard, but it's so worthwhile doing. This is far and away the best job I've ever had."