Related Policies
- Animals & Biodiversity
- Energy
- Environment
- Foreign Investment
- Regional Australia
- Sustainable Population & Immigration (Australia)
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
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- 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)