Environment

Policy background

Current levels of water use are completely unsustainable in Australia — the world’s driest inhabited continent. Excessive water use, especially by heavy industry and water-intensive agribusiness, is causing irreparable damage to our fragile ecosystems and creating chronic water shortages.

Conventional free-market economics aims to solve this problem by putting a price on water and allowing it to be traded by those who can afford to purchase it.

Climate change is already impacting our lives. As it gets worse, we will be affected by more floods and storms, bushfires and droughts. Globally there will be less clean water and farmland available. This disproportionately affects those who have the least — women, Indigenous people and those living in exploited nations.