Murray-Darling Basin Authority's sustainable limits study

Browsing round for background material on a post on my personal blog, Floods, Lake Eyre and yachting, reminded me about  the current Murray-Darling Basin Authority Sustainable Diversion Limits study. A dry title, but one whose purpose is defined in this way:

A central element of the Basin Plan is to set environmentally sustainable limits on the amount of water that can be taken from the Basin’s water resources. These are known as sustainable diversion limits (SDLs). SDLs will limit the amount of surface water and groundwater that can be taken from the Basin and will replace the current cap system.

Last year the Authority released an issues paper for comment; 155 submissions were received in response. You can find the issues paper and public submissions here.

I mention this because the outcomes from the process with its strong environmental focus are likely to have significant and differential economic and social effects across the vast basin affecting, among other things, jobs and land and real estate prices. For that reason, those who currently live in the Basin or who might want to move or invest there really need to monitor the process.

I haven't got my own mind around the issues yet. I will try to do so for a later post.   

The nuts and bolts of preparing a local or regional development strategy - a new series

From time to time I get asked about the best way of preparing a local or regional development development strategy.

Most of these strategies, and especially Government funded ones, fail. They generate a report but no action. The reasons Government funded ones especially fail is that the terms of the grant usually focus on the report, whereas effective planning is all about process.

Peter Drucker, the management guru who did so much to define strategic planning, described it as the futurity of current decisions. By this, he meant simply that planning was effective to the degree that it influenced what we did now, taking the future into account.

Over the next few posts I propose to provide a nuts and bolts guide to the whole process, drawing from my previous writing and experience.    

Need for a new approach to regional development in Australia

I try to avoid overt campaigning or political comment on this blog because it risks detracting from the blog's primary purpose, the promotion of the joy and variety of life outside the metros. However, I now feel obliged to make an exception to this rule.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics population projections suggest a continued drift to the metros. At 30 June 2007, 64% of Australians lived in a capital city. By 2056 this proportion is projected to increase to 67%.

I think that this is absurd. We have many areas of Australia that can not only absorb new people, but need them.

The metro drift has deep historical roots. The process has always been reinforcing. To those that have shall be given.

We need to break this cycle. Yet our capacity to do so seems always limited, condemned to a bitsy, ad hoc approach.

Just at present the current global economic crisis has led to calls for new infrastructure spending, something that I support. However, there is a very real risk that this increased spend will end up dominated by metro needs.

This holds even where spend itself is outside metro areas. An example is coastal highways linking metro centres.

Most people who visit this blog come because they have particular information needs. This means that the number of repeat visitors (the type of people who usually comment) is small. Still, I would be very interested in ideas as to what might be done to turn things round.

I would be especially interested in ideas at local or regional level. What do you need to improve your local situation?

China and Regional Australia 1 - introduction

I have been in China, making it difficult to post. I found the trip very interesting not just because of the exposure to China itself, but also because of the way it generated new ideas relevant to my various interests. Yes, China is very different from Regional Australia, but there are also surprising shared interests as well as things that we can learn.

For that reason, I thought that I might do a short series of posts while things are still fresh in my memory. I will use this post as an entry page, adding posts at the bottom as I write them.

Posts in the China and Regional Australia series

• China and Regional Australia 2 - attracting Chinese tourists 1: what do we have to sell?
• China and Regional Australia 3 - attracting Chinese tourists 2: telling a story
• China and Regional Australia 4 - attracting Chinese tourists 3: providing the right information

Review begins of Zinafex Agreement

ABC News reported that a review has begun into the landmark Agreement between Aborigines, the Zinifex mining company and the Queensland Government.

Zinifex's Century Mine operates under a unique tripartite agreement between Zinifex, the Queensland Government and local Native Title groups. The Gulf Communities Agreement (GCA) was negotiated under the Right to Negotiate provisions of the Native Title Act (1993) and was signed in February 1997.

The Native Title groups from the Gulf of Carpentaria involved in the agreement are the Waanyi, Mingginda, Gkuthaarn and Kukatj groups. The Agreement aimed at ensuring compensation, jobs and training opportunities for native title groups. Details of the Agreement can be found here and here.

David Hanlon from the review team says he will be visiting gulf communities to seek feedback on whether the agreement is working to help the region, in the state's far north, achieve economic self-sufficiency.

"I think it's really important for people to have their say on something that impacts on them," he said.

"In really crude terms, employment probably generates in the lower gulf somewhere about $9 or $10 million in revenue.

"When the mine shuts down, that's $9 or $10 million in revenue that goes."