The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) will meet today to bed down the National Water Initiative, amongst other things. This initiative has the potential to be a major milestone in the management of Australia's water resources.
Much has been achieved over the last year, and as such, the issues to be settled are limited and achievable.
After much distortion and hype there is now recognition that the environmental issues of the Murray Darling Basin are manageable. The demands of activists for a big flush of 1,500 gigalitres (equivalent to three Sydney Harbours) have been shelved, replaced by an agreement to provide up to 500 gigalitres of additional water for environmentally important icon sites, and with specified objectives. Achieving this will be no mean feat. In effect, it may involve taking some 7 per cent of water that is now used in farming along the Murray and its tributaries.
Moreover, nobody has an accurate fix on how much water is already allocated for environmental flows. Wetland working groups and forest management committees already control many hundreds of gigalitres of water and this quantity will increase with the new water sharing plans, at least in New South Wales. However, this environmental water doesn't appear on any general ledger.
The Murray Darling Basin Commission is not able to advise of the volume of environmental water, noting that it comes in different forms as minimum flows, environmental flow rules, contingency allowances and tradable entitlements.
What is clear, as the official statistics from the Murray Darling Basin Commission show, is that diversion for irrigation and Adelaide's water supply, total 34 per cent of inflows in an average year in the Murray River. This is much below the often falsely quoted figure of 80 per cent. Furthermore, despite the public perception that water quality in our river systems is in decline, key water quality indicators generally show improvement or are stable.
Unambiguous and permanent water property rights for farmers might also emerge after today's meeting.
Irrigators don't get a set water allocation. It has always been recognised that if it doesn't rain there will be less water to divide up. Irrigators accept and bear this risk. But they have been understandably cautious about giving regulatory agencies carte blanche to re-set allowable formal water allocations.
This has been a major point of contention in the negotiations in the lead up to COAG.
Irrigators are familiar with the Green's track record of using each agreement as a jump-off point for the next round of concessional demands. They believe that a proposed clause -- whereby water allocations can be reduced on the basis of "new knowledge" that shows current levels of extraction are unsustainable -- could just be the impetus for a new environmental campaign demanding more water for environmental flows irrespective of the evidence.
An increased capacity to trade water between catchments and states may also emerge from the National Water Initiative. As a consequence, there is potential for much more water to be extracted from the overall system than would be the case if water use was limited to the original water licence holder and his farm.
Rumour has it that the federal government is preparing to announce a large compensation package to buy out irrigation licences in catchments that are deemed over-allocated. This may be inequitable, because some money will go to farmers for water that arguably "never existed". The advantage, however, would be that many might breathe easier on the basis there was suddenly "more water" in the total water kitty -- at least for the Murray Darling system, the region driving the water agenda nationally.
Indeed, delegates attending this week's COAG meeting would do well to approach the National Water Initiative with positive pragmatism.
After all, planet earth is 70 per cent covered by water and, in terms of available fresh water per capita, we have a lot of water in Australia.
According to the World Resource Institute, we have 51,000 litres of available water per capita per day. This is one of the highest levels in the world, after Russia and Iceland, and well ahead of countries such as the United States (24,000) and the United Kingdom (only 3,000 litres per capita per day).
Most of this water falls in the north. This doesn't mean we should pipe it south to the Murray Darling Basin, but it does mean we have choices.
In Australia, we divert only 5 per cent of average annual runoff. Of the 5 per cent we divert, we even export much of it as food, including rice, wheat and sugar.
Many individual businesses are doing it tough, particularly in areas of continuing drought and where there is no developed water infrastructure. The bottom line however, is that as a nation we are not really that thirsty.
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