In 2016, Traditional Owners came together to discuss their collective vision for the Martuwarra, expressed in the Fitzroy River Declaration. Traditional Owners established the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council (MFRC) as a collective governance model to maintain the spiritual, cultural and environmental health of the catchment. Traditional Owners advocate a collaborative approach for an inclusive water governance model and catchment management plan. The MFRC advocates the need to establish a Fitzroy River Catchment Authority as a statutory body to monitor and regulate potential cumulative impacts from development. The Authority needs to be inclusive of all stakeholders and ensure that there is informed consent in decisions regarding development. This article articulates a local critique of water resource development and presents an alternative model of governance developed by Indigenous leaders of the West Kimberley.

Drinking water quality remains a persistent challenge across regional and remote Australia. We reviewed public reporting by 177 utilities and conducted a national assessment of reported exceedances against the health-based and aesthetic guideline values of the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG). Four definitions of a basic level of drinking water quality were tested to quantify service gaps across regional and remote areas of each subnational jurisdiction in 2018–2019. At least 25,245 people across 99 locations with populations <1000 reportedly accessed water services that did not comply with health-based guideline values. Including larger towns and water systems, the estimated service gap rises to at least 194,572 people across more than 115 locations. Considering health parameters and the ADWG definition of ‘good’ aesthetic characteristics, the reported service gap rises further to at least 627,736 people across 408 locations. Forty percent of all locations with recorded health exceedances were remote Indigenous communities. Monitoring and reporting gaps indicate that the actual incidence of non-compliance with the guideline values of the ADWG could be much higher than our estimates. Our results quantified the divergence in the assessment of water quality outcomes between Sustainable Development Goal Target 6.1 and the ADWG, demonstrated disparities between service levels in capital cities and the rest of Australia, and highlighted the need for place-based solutions. The methods and dataset provide a ‘proof-of-concept’ for an Australian national drinking water quality database to guide government investments in water services.

First Peoples are leading the conversation about Indigenous water rights policy in Australia. This paper reviews contemporary Aboriginal water policy and initiatives. We examine the ever-changing cycles of government action and inaction, and First Peoples’ responses. Three case studies: Strategic Indigenous Reserves in the Northern Territory, the First Peoples’ Water Engagement Council and the Fitzroy River Declaration illustrate: (1) First People’s expressions of the right to self-determination in relation to water; (2) First Peoples’ contributions to integrated water resource management principles and water governance in Australia; and (3) that State/Commonwealth Aboriginal water initiatives are often discontinued when elected government changes, and rarely given strength through legislation. We finish the review with policy recommendations that underline the need to ‘break the cycle’ of inconsistent government initiatives.

The article constructively critiques the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) 12 Principles on Water Governance (the OECD Principles). The human rights standard, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), provided the foundation for conceptualizing Indigenous water rights. The analysis used a modification of Zwarteveen and Boelens’ 2014 framework of the four echelons of water contestation. The analysis indicates that the OECD Principles assume state authority over water governance, make invisible Indigenous peoples’ own water governance systems and perpetuate the discourses of water colonialism. Drawing on Indigenous peoples’ water declarations, the Anishinaabe ‘Seven Grandfathers’ as water governance principles and Haudenosaunee examples, we demonstrate that the OECD Principles privilege certain understandings of water over others, reinforcing the dominant discourses of water as a resource and water governance based on extractive relationships with water. Reconciling the OECD Principles with UNDRIP’s human rights standard promotes Indigenous water justice. One option is to develop a reinterpretation of the OECD Principles. A second, potentially more substantive option is to review and reform the OECD Principles. A reform might consider adding a new dimension, ‘water justice,’ to the OECD Principles. Before reinterpretation or reform can occur, broader input is needed, and inclusion of Indigenous peoples into that process.

The ‘Living Waters, Law First’ water governance framework centres Living Waters, First Law and the health/well-being of people and Country. The framework is based on a groundwater policy position developed by the Walalakoo Aboriginal Corporation (WAC), the Nyikina and Mangala peoples’ native title corporation, in the West Kimberley, Western Australia in 2018. This article celebrates Traditional Owner’s pragmatic decolonising strategies. It explores the emerging conceptual challenges to the status quo by comparing the Living Waters, First Law framework to Australia’s settler state water governance framework, represented by the National Water Initiative. Bacchi’s ‘what is the problem represented to be’ approach is used to interrogate the underlying assumptions and logics (2009). We find that there are incommensurable differences with First Law and the Australian water reform agenda. Yet, our analysis also suggests ‘bridges’ in relation to sustainability, benefits and responsibilities could promote dialogues towards decolonial water futures.

Australia will not meet Sustainable Development Goal target 6.1, to “achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all” by 2030, unless water service provision is improved to hundreds of small (less than 10,000 residents), rural and remote (SRR) communities. We have estimated the national benefits of a programme to upgrade drinking water services to ensure ‘good quality’ for 395 Australian SRR communities using a stated preference survey of 3,523 participants reflective of the Australian population. Using multiple model estimates, we calculated the willingness to pay at between AU$324 and AU$847 per Australian household per year for 10 years. Aggregating across the relevant Australian population, we calculated the aggregate willingness to pay for water quality improvements at AU$1.2–4.7 billion yr⁻¹, or AU$8.3–33.2 billion as a 10-year net present value. We further estimated the capital and operating costs to provide ‘good-quality’ drinking water in the 395 SRR communities under three scenarios; the costs range from AU$0.51 to AU$3.29 million per community and, in total, from AU$0.2 billion to AU$1.3 billion.