On Monday, 7 December 2009, the Australian Financial Review ran
a news piece on the National Water Commission's
report-Australian water reform 2009: Second biennial assessment of
progress in implementation of the National Water Initiative. The
article highlighted the criticisms of state and federal government
agencies over slowness to deliver on a wide range of issues,
including water trading and a more integrated approach to planning.
The actual report was also critical of the lack of consideration of
climate change in planning for both. What is not contained in
either the newspaper piece or the report is any comment about
apparent conflicts in policy around water buybacks by the federal
government and Australia's climate change policies more
broadly. On the one hand, the view is that water in general has
been over allocated and the environment (in particular the Murray
Darling River System) is suffering. On the other hand, farmers and
water managers are collectively
