The National Water Initiative (NWI) is Australia's enduring blueprint for water reform. Through this initiative, governments across Australia have agreed on actions to achieve a more cohesive national approach to the way Australia manages, measures, plans for, prices, and trades water.
Australian Water Accounting Standard
The NWI identified the need for a consistent and standardised approach to water resource accounting, resulting in a decision to treat water accounting as a discipline comparable to that of financial accounting.
The Exposure Draft of the Australian Water Accounting Standard 1 was developed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to define the structure for a General Purpose Water Accounting Report. The draft standard is also accompanied by a series of model reports that illustrate how the standard would be applied to various hypothetical water reporting scenarios. The draft standard and model reports can be downloaded from the Bureau of Meteorology website where feedback is currently being sought.
General Purpose Water Accounting Reports 2009-2010
NSW Office of Water released General Purpose Water Accounting Reports for the valleys listed below. The reports were the first to be produced using the Draft Australian Water Accounting Standard.
General Purpose Water Accounting Reports 2010-2011
General Purpose Water Accounting Reports for all Murray-Darling Basin regulated river catchments are listed below as they are produced:
General Purpose Water Accounting Reports – Groundwater methodologies
The NSW Office of Water General Purpose Water Accounting Reports include estimates of the physical groundwater processes occurring in the relevant NSW aquifer systems. These estimates were required to be produced by implementing a range of methods which are discussed in detail in this document.