McKay on the History of Australian Water Law

Jennifer Margaret McKay, University of South Australia School of Law, has posted Australian Water Law History: The Move from Introspective State Sovereignty to a National Interest Approach and the Influence of International Law, which appears in Sovereignty and International Water Law in the History of Water, series III, volume 2, 2015

There are two types of water sovereignty in Australia. The first concerns state based sovereignty, and the socio‑legal history of this will be outlined. The second is national sovereignty, and this has two aspects: the first includes the national accreditation of state‑based water use regimes under the 2007 Water Act and the legislative instrument of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, which impacts on domestic freshwater use matters; the second aspect of national sovereignty concerns the regulation of foreign ownership of freshwater which is a national competency under the Foreign Investment and Takeover Act 1975. This chapter will discuss these types of sovereignty.