National Effort Can Solve Water Shortage

This opinion piece by AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten was published in the Australian on February 19, 2007.

We must invest whatever it takes to waterproof our country, urges Bill Shorten.

After more than five years of drought, Prime Minister John Howard's recent promise of $10 billion for water infrastructure projects is certainly welcome. It's a lot of money, but in the context of the problem, it's only a beginning.

For real progress to be made on the water issue, we've got to face up to the myths of water management in Australia.

Those myths are that water is free; that 1000 separate water authorities with different regulations around Australia is somehow a good idea; that using recycled water equates to drinking sewage; that flood irrigation cotton and rice are sustainable crops in any part of the country; that fixing the problem means choosing between supporting the country or the cities; that there's no place for the private sector in water, and that fixing the problem is too expensive.

Water should be free? No, it shouldn't. It's a valuable resource and we need to treat it as such - we should be paying for it, not just its delivery costs. After all, people who can get it for a tenth of one cent out of the tap seem happy to pay a couple of bucks for it if it comes in a bottle from the milk bar. And industry should pay for what it uses. We need pricing regimes that balance equity considerations, while valuing water as the scarce resource it is.

Water needs to be priced at a level that allows water supply authorities to invest in new infrastructure. We've got to connect our regional and city water supply systems, and there must be trading within those systems.

There are 1,000 separate water authorities in Australia. To be precise, 387 water supply authorities, 340 surface water management areas and 367 groundwater management areas. This is unworkable without common regulations. As the January 2007 issue of ANZ Economist said, "Australia's water regulation and management is highly disjointed.. even water systems that are physically connected are managed by different local water authorities."

As Kevin Rudd has said, we must eliminate "the bureaucratic stumbling blocks that have resulted in little or no real progress on water reform."

Water recycled from sewage is not our only option while industry and agriculture shouldn't use gigalitres of fresh water where recycled water could be substituted. Desalination will also be vital - small, mobile desalination plants are an excellent solution for our dehydrated regional towns.

It's time to bite the bullet on cotton and rice. Is it really sustainable to keep farming these high-water, flood irrigation, low-yield crops in places like the parched Murray Darling Basin?

We'll need to help farmers through this period of structural adjustment; in the same way we helped workers and employers in the car industry and the textile industries in the 1980s. The Prime Minister must show some leadership and buy water entitlements from cotton and rice farmers, compulsorily if necessary.

The private sector has a big role to play. Private companies are highly capable at building and operating water infrastructure, such as treatment plants. Let's consider how the billions of dollars Australians have saved in industry superannuation funds can be invested in water infrastructure projects.

Fixing the problem is going to be expensive - that's the only myth with a solid basis in reality. But what's the alternative? We have to invest whatever it takes to waterproof our country. If we'd been worried about cost when stringing the outback with telegraph lines, we'd still be using carrier pigeons.

We need a dedicated commitment of funds. Australia should be setting a target for a proportion of its gross domestic product to be spent on necessary water infrastructure.
And in the meantime, we've got to end serial water wastage.

Look at flow testing of our multi-storey buildings. The electric pump, and its back-up pump, that get water to the upper levels are flow-tested, by law, twice a year. That wastes a million litres of fresh water every year. That's per building. It's staggering. And it's a silly mistake that could be avoided by re-using water.

Here's just a few of the many solutions:

• Harness new technologies, like the Total Channel Control systems, being trialled with irrigators in Shepparton.

• Mandate the collection and re-use of storm water from new commercial buildings, and retrofit existing buildings, like hospitals and schools, to do the same. We've got more than ten thousand hectares of roof area in Australia - if water was collected from just half that, it would be enough to supply Sydney or Melbourne for a whole year.

• Launch a new National Standard rating system on household appliances, so consumers know their water efficiency. Water efficient washing machines use one third of the water as older models.

• Use better design in new buildings to reduce our dependence on cooling systems.

It'll all add up.

According to Access Economics, the drought sliced one percent off our GDP last year, and if it doesn't end soon, our agricultural sector could shrink - permanently - by a third.

It's not city against country, it's not Commonwealth Government against State Government. It's just Australians, working together to keep Australia the lucky country.