Future Water: Improving Planning, Markets, Enforcement and Learning

Abstract

Water is indispensable to our life, our economy, our food security and our environment. Ensuring its protection and sustainable use requires effective and efficient law and policy. Over the last 120 years, our water laws have been on a prolonged reform journey. Spurred by Australia’s water-scarce environment and ongoing overallocation challenges, Australia’s water law system has progressed from common law rights, to state regulation, to intergovernmental action under the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) led National Competition Policy reforms and the National Water Initiative (NWI). The latter agreement, which embraced statutory-based collaborative water planning, cap and trade markets, regulation and accounting, monitoring and review, has demarcated Australia as a leading laboratory of water governance. Even so, after such a long reform journey, fatigue and apathy are increasingly palpable in water policy. Notwithstanding recent emphasis on northern water resource development, this equivocation about continued national reforms is jeopardising Australia’s long-term water sustainability. This chapter argues that entrenching and extending national reforms is vital to Australia’s future water security. It argues for four key broad reforms. The context and justification for each reform is given by briefly evaluating the performance of NWI planning, markets, regulation and monitoring. The discussion focuses particularly on non-urban water management. This is because agriculture is the largest consumer of Australia’s water, making it the area where some of the biggest gains can be made in securing sustainable water management.