Trends in Aboriginal water ownership in New South Wales, Australia: The continuities between colonial and neoliberal forms of dispossession

Water colonialism and Indigenous water justice in south-eastern Australia

“…Consequently, we triangulate a range of data from different sources, and make the best estimates we can from the limited available data. These include data about Aboriginal collective water holdings (from Hartwig et al, 2020) and land holdings collated from various government sources in 2019, census data on Indigenous agricultural employment and business ownership in 2016, land-use data assembled from remotely sensed imagery acquired in 2017 (Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE), 2018) and regional water use and agricultural sales data estimated from the Australian Bureau of Statistics' (ABS) Rural Environment and Agricultural Commodities Survey (REACS) (ABS, 2019a, 2019b. We furnish these data to illustrate the expropriation of water by settlers and the economic consequences of water colonialism.…”

“…Water trading commenced in parts of the MDB from the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s (Grafton & Wheeler, 2018). While NSW Aboriginal land rights laws date from this time, governments had already over-allocated water-use entitlements beyond sustainable levels at the time land rights were introduced (Hartwig et al, 2020;Jackson, 2017a). Although the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) facilitates state recognition of Indigenous water rights and interests, interpretations remain narrow, encompassing only the right to water for personal, social, domestic and 'non-consumptive' cultural purposes (Hartwig et al, 2018).…”

“…In some cases, returned land also included water entitlements (Hartwig et al, 2020). Table 2 presents recent estimates of the total land and water holdings acquired through these arrangements by Aboriginal entities, noting that some Aboriginal individuals own agricultural properties and water entitlements, but land title and water registers prevent their identification (Altman & Arthur, 2009;Altman & Markham, 2015).…”

“…Aboriginal people currently receive negligible benefits from irrigation and agricultural activities on their territories. The ongoing colonial expropriation of water benefits is at least partly linked to the distribution, quantity and quality of Aboriginal land and water holdings, itself a direct consequence of historical patterns of land and water allocation and usage, as well as selective approaches of the state to restitution (Hartwig et al, 2020;Jackson, 2017a;Norman, 2015;Weir, 2009). These analyses demonstrate that the return of Note: Values of irrigated agricultural production are calculated at the property level based on natural resource management (NRM) region averages for commodity groups in ABS (2019a), with values aggregated by sustainable diversion limit (SDL) resource unit.…”

“…For comparison, Aboriginal advocates argued 20 years ago, when water was less costly, that A$250 million was needed to redistribute water more equitably across NSW alone (McAvoy, 2008). The reliability and security of water access under purchased water entitlements, which can affect the material benefits derived from water, is another key concern (Hartwig et al, 2020). To date, no water entitlements have been purchased with these committed funds.…”