Fresh water resources and their allocation and assignment to competing users and uses have seldom attracted more attention in Australian polity.

Over the last three decades policy makers have been actively dealing with water reforms, largely driven by the maturation of the water economy. A mature water economy is characterised by inelastic supply of ‘new' water and the need for expensive rehabilitation of ageing projects (Randall 1981).

Adding to the necessity to more actively engage in ‘water management' is the scientific knowledge emerging on the impacts of climate change on Australian hydrology. In simple terms, Australia's rainfall is expected to decline in much of the southern portion of the continent and to become markedly more episodic in nature across the nation generally (CSIRO 2008). These predictions are set against the existing hydrological ‘boom and bust' cycles that typify much of this  landscape. More specifically, the rainfall of this country is so variable in geographic and temporal terms as to require the average water storage to be twice that of the global norm to deliver the same level of reliability (Smith 1998).

One of the major turning points in water reform in Australia was the decision by the Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) to include water as part of the competition reform agenda in the early 1990s. The upshot was the Water Reform Framework of 1994 which comprised five main elements: 

• the introduction of pricing practices aimed at recovering costs, being consumption based and removing (or at least making overt) cross-subsidies;
• the development and implementation of a system of volumetric and tradeable water allocations that were separable from land and which recognised the needs of the environment; 
• the separation of regulation, water service delivery and resource management functions; 
• two-part tariffs were adopted for urban water users, where practicable; and,
• all future investments in water infrastructure were to meet both economic and environmental sustainability criteria.

Subsequently, the National Water Initiative (NWI) was approved by CoAG in 2004 and continues to act as the guiding framework for managing water in this country. The NWI seeks to achieve national compatibility in water markets, regulatory and planning schemes with the aim of securing sustainable management of surface and groundwater. The NWI specifies that consumptive use of water requires a water access entitlement which should be described in legislation as a perpetual share of the consumptive pool of a water resource (NWI paragraph 28).

The NWI also recognises: 

• the continuing national imperative to increase the productivity and efficiency of Australia's water use;
• the need to service rural and urban communities; and
• the importance of ensuring the health of river and groundwater systems, including the establishment of clear pathways to return all systems to environmentally sustainable levels of extraction (paragraph 5, NWI).

Notwithstanding the apparent breadth of these initiatives, the sectored coverage and treatment of water interests is hardly comprehensive or complete. Even a cursory review of the projects sponsored by the National Water Commission (NWC) as part of the NWI would reveal that most attention has been given to the potential trade-offs that need to be struck between agriculture, as an extractive user of water, and environmental interests, which would generally prefer to limit extractions.

Whilst a noticeable shift occurred between the 1994 and 2004 reforms with more detailed treatment of urban water use, nowhere in the NWI are the particular water demands of recreation and tourism specified. A search of the NWC website supports this view and details of the funding provided to projects under the Raising National Water Standards Program provided in Table 1 are offered as evidence.

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