Waterfind Pty Ltd
PO Box 3316
Rundle Mall SA 5000
Australia
Northern Australia Taskforce
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
PO Box 6500
CANBERRA ACT 2600
Australia
To Whom it May Concern
Waterfind thanks the Northern Australia taskforce for the opportunity to provide a submission to the Green Paper on Developing Northern Australia.
Waterfind, Australia's water market specialist, is a pioneer in the water market industry. Waterfind facilitates the buying and selling of both permanent and temporary water across the major irrigation regions in Australia. Waterfind is a privately owned Australian company and is governed by an independent board of directors
Waterfind believes that water markets represent the best policy option for managing scarce water resources in Australia. Over the last 2 decades the development of water markets has supported the development of Australia’s irrigation districts, has supported the resilience of rural communities through periods of extreme drought and has provided an effective, market based, mechanism for resolving competing claims to scarce water resources.
Waterfind supports the emphasis within the Green Paper on integrating water markets into water management policies from their development in Northern Australia and congratulates the taskforce of adopting this forward looking approach for water resource management. Effective water markets will multiply the economic growth potential of northern Australia through providing efficient, cost effective pathways for industry to access water resources.
Particularly, Waterfind supports the discussion of the importance of water resources in Section C and D of the Green Paper. Waterfind also supports the inclusion of water markets in the Policy
Directions box of Section D, of;
Improving water access and management: including through better understanding of systems, planning and investing in new infrastructure (such as dams) and reforming water management and planning, including functional water markets.
There are several recommendations that Waterfind submits to the Taskforce for the development of the White Paper
1.
Waterfind recommends that the ‘Tasmania Model’ be used as the basis of development of water markets and integration of water markets into water infrastructure decisions. The success of the development of new irrigation districts in Tasmania over the last 5 years has been due to the careful policy development by the Tasmanian Government.

We note that there is a discussion of applying the Tasmanian model of water infrastructure funding to northern Australia. Waterfind supports this concept and recommends that, more broadly, the experiences of developing new irrigation districts in Tasmania is applied in the development of northern Australia.
2.
Waterfind recommends that for every water infrastructure project a system of water trading between users is required in order for the project to be approved. The experience of large water infrastructure projects is that after several years there inevitably users who wish to leave the system, typically due to changes in their business circumstances.
Where there is no effective trading mechanism between users of infrastructure the only option for users is to seek a variation of their supply contract, which is inevitably a long, slow and costly process
3.
Waterfind recommends that for water infrastructure projects that provide water to a number of users a clear differentiation is made at a policy level between a ‘supply contract’, which is between the owner of water infrastructure and users, and a ‘water right’, which is owned by water user and recorded on a Government water register.
Waterfind’s recommendation is that water infrastructure owners should be limited to offering supply contracts only and that the users of water must own a right to water in the water source that the water is extracted from. This structure will avoid complications and conflicts that have occurred in irrigation districts in southern Australia, specifically; o It will avoid conflict between infrastructure clients and private river diverters later down the track by allowing them both to engage with each other freely in a single water market. o It will allow supply contracts to be traded between users will provide flexibility for users of the infrastructure as well as give a clear price signal to the value of the infrastructure that can support future infrastructure investment decisions.
Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further information or clarification on our submission to the Green Paper on Developing Northern Australia.
Yours Sincerely
Tom Rooney
Chief Executive Officer, Waterfind