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

Abstract

There is significant interest in global trends in Indigenous land titling but relatively less attention given to Indigenous water tenure despite significant reform of water governance regimes in many regions of the world. This paper considers the intertwined and complex history of Aboriginal land and water tenure in the Australian State of New South Wales, within the Murray-Darling Basin. Its temporal scope encompasses the initial dispossession effected by colonization and settler water development; the re-appropriation of land and water under social justice restoration schemes from the 1970s; and the past decade in which the small water holdings in the possession of some Aboriginal organizations have significantly diminished. The paper shows that proprietary rights to land and water acquired through the colonial period strongly conditioned rights of access to water during subsequent eras, particularly when Australian governments separated land and water titles and capped water use to create the world’s biggest water market. Using empirical water entitlement data, we profile the composition, spatial distribution and value of Aboriginal water holdings in the NSW portion of the Murray-Darling Basin. We show that while Aboriginal people in this area constitute nearly 10 % of the total population, their organizations hold only 0.2 % of the available surface water. We identify changes in Aboriginal water holdings between 2009 and 2018 that are indicative of a new wave of dispossession. Almost one fifth of Aboriginal water holdings by volume were lost over 2009−18 (at least 17.2 % in standardized terms). We discuss the factors that render Aboriginal water-holders vulnerable to the loss of valuable water rights and those factors that constrain the ability of all Aboriginal people to fully enjoy the benefits of water access, including water market participation. Additionally, we identify critical omissions in Australian water rights reform and offer recommendations for redress that are of wider international relevance.

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