There’s a hole in the bucket!

Our politicians know that our projected population numbers are understated at 35 million by 2050. Properly compounding our current population of 22 million at the current growth rate of 2.1 per cent yields a figure of more than 50 million people by that time. To put that into a water context, Australia has one of the highest rates of internal domestic water use per person in the world, and even back in 2006 the Federal Government's State of the Environment report revealed that many Australian cities had already exceeded sustainable water yields.

The National Water Commission's recently issued report Improving Environmental Sustainability in Water Planning confirms that we're in trouble at the most basic levels: our governments haven't even been able to even coordinate and determine a national definition of "environmentally sustainable levels of extraction" and "overallocation". What the hell is going on? Answer: very little.

Australia is in a worse state than California, but you can bet the Australian Government won't declare a water shortage state of emergency - that would be far too defeatist for a PM whose major focus seemed to be international self-aggrandisement. In fact, if history is any guide, the best bet is that the Australian Government will keep hyping itself loudly and doing little.

If you doubt that, there is yet another benchmark. Last week the National Water Commission released Australian Water Reform 2009, its two-yearly assessment of progress in implementing the National Water Initiative, which in turn is the blueprint for national water reform agreed by all Australian governments in 2004. The report's media release opened by saying that "Australia's water is still in trouble" and reports Commission chair Ken Matthews saying, "This independent report shows that, despite some progress, the pace of water reform has slowed on almost every front."

The Commission has made 68 recommendations for further action to refocus national reform efforts over the next two years. Make a note to look back in two years' time to see how many of those 68 recommendations were "properly" acted upon.