DCCEEW today released the Exposure Draft of the Water Markets Intermediaries Code (the Code) and an Overview of the draft are now available for consultation. On this page you will be able to submit your feedback on the Exposure Draft. The consultation will be open until 11.59pm on Sunday 6 April 2025. The Exposure Draft incorporates feedback from the Policy Position Paper consultation in November-December 2024.
DCCEEW today released their Final policy position paper on the water market intermediaries trust accounting and code exemptions, the final
position to inform the future exposure regulations.
We will review this with interest given the concerns raised regarding the likely impacts and expectations on some intermediaries.
DCCEEW have released their Final policy position paper on the Water Market Information, including pre-trade data adn obligations for registering trades. This information sets the policy positions to be incorporated into the regulations in coming months, for implementation in a staged approach over 2026 and 2027. For more information visit the Department webpage. Click the link to see the document.
Minister Plibersek tabled the Australia Audit Office's review of the 2023 Strategic Purchases for Bridging the Gap, which you may recall the Inspector General recently found flaws in governance and managing conflicts.
The report identified steps were taken to address earlier deficiencies and that processes stacked up. What was interesting to read in
the detail were questions and recommendations about the purpose of these purchases towards the overall policy outcomes, which you will hear
more from NIC about this area
On Monday, Prime Minister Albanese announced the 2024 Annual Report on Closing the Gap and the 2025 workplan.
We note, that for 2025 actions the priorities will be to develop a First Nations Water Strategy to inform Commonwealth actions under the proposed National Water Agreement. As well as, the Commonwealth continues to work with jurisdictions and a Coalition of Peaks to develop the
inland waters target to measure progress towards securing First Nation peoples interest in inland water bodies.
Under Objective 15 there are current targets for land and sea, but the inland target was not nationally agreed.
We hope to have a Member Policy update on this in the coming month.
The MDBA released the Constraints Roadmap today which outlines the new framework for cross-border delivery of the Basin Constraints program for another 10-years. The MDBA stating that “The Roadmap provides a guide for governments and communities in navigating the complex reforms required to relax constraints. The findings reflect the MDBA’s view on how to move forward. We hope that they are embraced by governments. Governments are the ultimate decision-makers on moving forward in relaxing constraints.” […]
The Inspector General this week released their 2022-2023 Murray Darling Basin
Compliance Report. The
report states that "this compliance performance report provides a sample of common compliance activities metrics for each Basin State
which will be incorporated into progressively broader reporting under a Basin-wide compliance performance reporting scheme. It is also
anticipated that future reporting on compliance activities will be at the water resource plan level."
The report provides an overview of the different approaches and outcomes to compliance in each of the Basin States. NSW reported licence
holder numbers not metered percentage (with a target of 95% underway), SA reported 98.2% of take was metered, Queensland report 74% of take was metered, in Victoria 98% was metered (and 76% telemetered), no details for ACT. Victoria has the largest number of statutory officers, despite have the highest percentage of telemetered meters. Victoria also had the highest number of
investigations open and closed and warnings, whereas SA had the highest number and greatest value of fines.
DCCEEW recently released their progress assessment of the water market reforms. This document outlines the steps taken to implement the ACCC recommendations and highlights the significant change still to navigate through water market reforms as required by the Restoring Our Rivers 2023 amendment. Unfortunately, the progress update provides no assessment of the costs and benefits of these reforms, rather forges ahead. Current consultation include Water Market Decisions, Water Market Pre-Trade data and the final policy position for the Intermediaries Code via the Department’s website.
Following ongoing discussions with DCCEEW about accountability and transparency of progress on the Murray Darling Basin Plan, our attention was drawn to this new resource to track the progress. Whilst it doesn't go all the way with providing the much-needed transparency, it does provide a visual examples of the progress, and remaining effort. Its worth a look.
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