title: Aboriginal water rights in New South Wales: Implications of water governance reform for self-determination
Creators: name: Hartwig, Lana D
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: neoliberal water governance
subject: self-determination
subject: Aboriginal peoples
subject: Murray-Darling Basin
subject: Australia

description: Over recent decades, Indigenous peoples’ claims for rights to govern, protect and benefit from the use of their waters have attracted increased global attention. These claims form part of a broader set of demands for Indigenous self-determination, now enshrined in international norms, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, Indigenous peoples’ struggles for self-determination broadly, and freshwater rights specifically, are contentious and complex. This is especially so in settler-colonial contexts where Indigenous and settler populations and their institutions and political systems co-exist in complicated and interconnected ways. Over roughly the same period, we have also witnessed the transformation of freshwater governance internationally. Underpinned by neoliberal rationality, nation states have tended to frame water governance challenges as issues of scarcity and inefficiency, and have proffered predominantly market-based and demand-focused policy and legislative responses. Scholars and practitioners disagree about whether these neoliberal water governance and distribution approaches create opportunities or further obstacles for appropriately addressing Indigenous freshwater claims. Some are concerned about how neoliberal rationality masks power asymmetries and constructs water as (only) an economic and value-free resource, which may displace alternative ontological and material water realities that do not align with dominant neoliberal representations of water. These arguments about the pros and cons of neoliberal water governance and water markets play out in Australia. Over the past twenty years, escalating Aboriginal claims for freshwater rights have coincided with widespread neoliberal water reforms. These reforms have led to the development of the world’s biggest water market and completely restructured water rights. Despite this, Aboriginal peoples’ water justice claims remain unresolved and little is known about how neoliberal water governance and market frameworks materially or otherwise affect Aboriginal peoples in this region. In response, this thesis describes and analyses the effects of Australia’s neoliberal water governance on self-determination for Aboriginal peoples. It uses the New South Wales portion of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s most productive agricultural region, as a case study to examine the experiences of Aboriginal peoples who seek rights to access, use and manage water. Theoretical insights from critiques of neoliberalism, settler-colonial theory, legal and ontological pluralism and Indigenous methodologies informed the methodological approach to conceptualising and responding to this research problem. Data was collected via semi-structured interviews with Aboriginal water policy experts and representatives from Aboriginal organisations across the case study area that hold statutory water entitlements, as well as archival, documentary and state water entitlement data analysis. The two key interrelated arguments and findings of this study are as follows. First, the neoliberal governance regime under which Aboriginal peoples currently seek water access and self-determination is built upon and entrenches the exclusion of Aboriginal peoples from historical land and water governance. Aboriginal peoples’ abilities to access, freely care for, manage and determine the use of water are significantly curtailed by enduring settler-colonial power relations. Evidence of this is obtained by quantifying and analysing Aboriginal-held water entitlements, establishing a profile of current holdings, and showing changes to these holdings over time. Analysis of interviews with Aboriginal water policy experts about their experiences and struggles to secure Aboriginal water rights in the recent era also support this finding. Second, this thesis finds that where Aboriginal entities hold commercially valuable statutory water entitlements, there are some opportunities for self-determination but these are generally limited and constrained by structural, organisational and wider governance factors. Analysis of attitudes and behaviours of Aboriginal organisations and representatives who trade in the water market reveals that the conditions that arise from neoliberal water governance (and its intersection with neoliberal Aboriginal affairs policies) encourage them to conceptualise themselves, their water property rights and their pathways to self-determination, in particular ways that align with market subjectivities. This has the effect of narrowing the magnitude and suite of benefits that Aboriginal organisations derive from holding rights to water. The findings from this work present important and timely insights for policy and law reform processes currently underway across Australia. The findings also offer valuable insights for Aboriginal organisations seeking to better engage with water governance and wanting to utilise and manage their water in ways of their choosing.