If there is one thing that Australians know well by now, it is that state and federal governments frequently take from major reports only those points and recommendations which fit with their own political world view and/or those that can be easily distorted to meet the expectations of their party's financial backers - thus ensuring that little positive change occurs .
Water is the basis of life, without it communities perish and nations go into decline. That is one of the hard facts facing Australia as the impacts of climate change start to bite.
It is time for people to stand up in defence of this country's river and ground water systems and make sure governments understand that the environmental, economic and cultural vandalism they have supported in the past will no longer be tolerated in the present or the future.
Australian Government, Productivity Commission:
National Water Reform
Draft report
This draft report was released on 11 February 2021.
This draft report assesses the progress of the Australian, State and Territory governments towards achieving the objectives and outcomes of the National Water Initiative (NWI), and provides practical advice on future directions for national water reform.
You are invited to examine the draft report and to make a written submission or brief comment by Wednesday 24 March 2021.
Make a submission or Make a brief comment
The final report is expected to be handed to the Australian Government by the end of June 2021.
Download the draft report
The Conversation, 11 February 2021:
Most Australians know all too well how precious water is. Sydney just experienced a severe drought, while towns across New South Wales and Queensland ran out of drinking water. Under climate change, the situation will become more dire, and more common.
It wasn’t meant to be this way. In 2004, federal, state and territory governments signed up to the National Water Initiative. It was meant to secure Australia’s water supplies through better governance and plans for sustainable use across industry, environment and the community.
But a report by the Productivity Commission released today says the policy must be updated. It found the National Water Initiative is not fit for the challenges of climate change, a growing population and our changing perceptions of how we value water.
The report’s findings matter to all Australians, whether you live in a city or a drought-ravaged town. If governments don’t manage water better, on our behalf, then entire communities may disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to degrade. It’s time for a change.
The report acknowledges progress in national water reform, and says Australia’s allocation of water resources has improved. But the commission makes clear there’s still much to be done, including:
- making water infrastructure projects a critical part of the National Water Initiative
- explicitly recognising how climate change threatens water-sharing agreement between states, users, towns, agriculture and the environment
- more meaningful recognition of Indigenous rights to water delivering adequate drinking water quality to all Australians, including those in regional and remote communities, especially during drought
- all states committing to drought management plans.
Read the full article here.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
17 February 2021:
A
new national water reform report is inundated with positivity. But a
closer look leaves you with a sinking feeling.
A
glance at the draft report on national water reform from the
Productivity Commission reminds me of the repeated judgment from old
Mr Grace, the doddering owner of the department store in Are You
Being Served? as he headed for the door: "You've all done very
well!"
Its
review of the progress of the National Water Initiative signed by the
federal and state governments in 2004 - encompassing agreements on
the Murray-Darling Basin - is terribly polite and relentlessly
upbeat.
Apparently,
governments have made "good progress" in having "largely
achieved" their reform commitments. All that remains is just the
need for a teensy-weensy bit of "policy renewal".
This
mild-mannered stuff and congratulatory tone bear no resemblance to my
memories of meetings of angry farmers railing against stupid greenies
and other city slickers; of their insistence that the immediate needs
of irrigators and irrigation towns along the river take priority over
the river system's ultimate survival; of state governments'
insistence on favouring their own irrigators over those in states
further down the river; of federal and state National Party ministers
happy to slip farmers a quiet favour, turning a blind eye to blatant
infringements of the rules; of federal Labor ministers who, even with
no seats to lose in the region, were unwilling to make themselves
unpopular by standing up for the rivers' future.
I
remember that the Howard government spent billions helping individual
farmers make their irrigation systems more resistant to evaporation
and seepage when all the benefits went to the farmer and none to the
river system.
I
remember all the infighting between government water agencies, and
the mass fish kills during the recent drought in NSW and Queensland,
for which the managers of the system accepted no responsibility.
Fortunately,
reporters are adept at ignoring all the happy flannel up the front of
government reports and finding the carefully hidden bad bits. And we
have the assistance of water experts, including Professor Quentin
Grafton, of the Australian National University, whose summary of the
report in The Conversation is headed: "Our national water policy
is outdated, unfair and not fit for climate challenges."
"If
governments don't manage water better ... entire communities may
disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to
degrade," he says.
The
report's proposal to make "water infrastructure developments"
a much larger part of the National Water Initiative is a critical way
to keep governments honest. For years, state and federal governments
have used taxpayers' dollars to pay for farming water infrastructure
that largely benefits big corporate irrigators, Grafton says.
Last
year the Morrison government announced a further $2 billion for its
Building 21st Century Water Infrastructure project. Such
megaprojects, he says, perpetuate the myth that Australia - the
driest inhabited continent on Earth - can be "drought-proofed".
When
governments signed the original initiative in 2004, they agreed to
ensure investments in infrastructure would be both economically
viable and ecologically sustainable. But many projects appear to be
neither.
The
report notes, for example, that building the Dungowan Dam in NSW
means "any infrastructure that improves reliability for one user
will affect water availability for others". The "prospect
of 'new' water is illusory". Projects that aren't economically
viable or ecologically sustainable can "burden taxpayers with
ongoing costs, discourage efficient water use" and create
long-lived impacts on communities and the environment", the
report warns.
Equally
disturbing is that billions of dollars for water infrastructure are
presently targeted primarily at the agriculture and mining
industries, while communities in desperate need of clean drinking
water miss out, Grafton says.
Luckily,
the report isn't so house trained as to avoid mentioning the gorilla
the Morrison government prefers not to notice. There's a lot about
the consequences of climate change. It says droughts will likely
become more intense and frequent and, in many places, water will
become scarce.
In
Grafton's summary, the report says planning provisions were
inadequate to deal with both the millennium drought and the recent
drought in Eastern Australia. The 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan, for
instance, took no account of climate change when determining how much
water to take from waterways.
The
present federal government actually dismantled the National Water
Commission in 2015, so we no longer have a resourced, well-informed
agency to "mark the homework" and make sure the reforms
were being implemented as agreed, Grafton says.
In
2007, the worst year of the millennium drought - and the year John
Howard feared he'd lose the election if he didn't match Labor's
promise to introduce an emissions trading scheme - Howard remarked
that "in a protracted drought, and with the prospect of
long-term climate change, we need radical and permanent change".
Professor
Grafton says we're still waiting for that change. "If Australia
is to be prosperous and liveable into the future, governments must
urgently implement water reform."
