Water

Related Policies

Policy

Better manage and conserve our water in urban and regional areas.

"Melbourne could begin to experience chronic water shortages within about a decade, even if the desalination plant is cranked up to its full capacity, as climate change and population growth rapidly deplete the city's dams." The Age

Policy Methods (Federal & State)

To help achieve this Sustainable Australia Party will:

  • Facilitate reduced water use where possible, while achieving greater water reuse and recycling, particularly in commercial industry and agriculture operations
  • Protect environmental flows in all river systems to ensure that the quantity and quality of water sustains communities, including traditional owners, and entire river ecosystems
  • Allow floodplains to naturally rehydrate
  • Prioritise water for Australia’s environment, food security and local communities over export-related uses
  • Implement a public register listing all owners of water entitlements
  • Better monitoring, metering and reporting of water levels and irrigation diversions, including through satellite and drone imagery
  • Prefer crops with lower and minimal irrigation needs
  • Buy back water licenses from irrigators where required
  • Support all communities through an environmental job guarantee program (also see Job Guarantee policy)
  • Conduct a Federal Royal Commission into water management in the Murray–Darling Basin, to scientifically determine, among other things:
    • An appropriate cap on water diversions
    • An investigation of total return flows from irrigation water and total water actually delivered to the environment
    • The appropriateness of speculative water trading and commodification

“You don’t even need a DA to set up a nut farm... Where Victoria has put in a moratorium on permanent plantings, NSW is still rolling out the red carpet to these international investors." Michael West Media

    • Stabilise Australia’s population as soon as practicable (also see Sustainable Population & Immigration (Australia) policy)

"Around one million of this projected population growth is also expected to occur in Sydney’s West, whose water supply is already buckling." MacroBusiness

  • Implement a ban on all coal seam gas exploration and new coal mines, which among other things, threaten to pollute groundwater including within the Great Artesian Basin (also see Energy policy)

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