Water planning 101: stabilise the population

"We have a choice about whether this growth continues". The hell we do, retort Treasury overlords.

In conclusion, the report tags rapid population-growth as a "Faustian bargain". Sacrificing voter wellbeing for "short term interests of an elite few".

Compromised water-planning

The report could have said more, about slack rural-water planning and regulation. Aggregate usage of surface, ground, and floodwater resources is poorly measured and monitored.

Even along MDB river plains, a significant proportion isn't metered, with casual theft and "mysterious" disappearances of huge volumes. Nonchalantly regulated floodplain "harvesting" is a persistent woe.

Rigged on to this creaking irrigation contraption is our 21^st century MDB water-market. Delivering rather what you'd expect – prosperous marketeers, if not necessarily farmers and communities.

Though SPA does question, why state-local governments accept Treasury's onerous population diktats. When they're the ones who must deliver the infrastructure – and water.

I'd go further. Nearly all the key "stakeholders" are on the Treasury team.

Usually, I categorise them like this: Federal politics; federal agencies; states and cities; industry and developers; economists, planners and demographers; the media; universities and unions; think tanks and interest groups.

Among these, it's not greatly controversial, that this government's heading for nearly 1.5 million in net migration, over its three-year term. In a Big Thirsty, this ought to be highly controversial.

We're thrashing the 2006-19 Big Australia years. Pulverising by a factor of six, the historical average from federation to date. Doesn't seem to perplex water-planners.

Like our climate-besotted urban-planners, they've hobbled their own professionalism. Though very ingenious, they're also embedded "influencers", not always in a good way.

Check Australian Water Association website. There's no flashing light, that equitable water security is a forbidding mountain to climb, on top of steeply rising population.