This briefing paper summarises the legislative and administrative arrangements for water management in rural NSW.

Water regulation commenced in NSW with the Water Act 1912. Substantial water reforms have taken place within the past 20 years, with the Commonwealth Government playing a major role.

Two themes have predominated in these reforms: (1) governance of the Murray-Darling Basin; and (2) a reform agenda for water in Australia set by COAG that has focused on maximising water use efficiency in order to optimise economic, social and environmental outcomes. The first theme commenced with a Murray-Darling Basin Agreement in 1992 that set out to co-ordinate management of the Murray-Darling Basin by Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia, the ACT and the Commonwealth Governments. This Agreement was superseded in 2008 by the Agreement on Murray-Darling Basin Reform. State powers were referred to the Commonwealth to enable it to assume primary responsibility for the Murray-Darling Basin.

The second theme was set by the COAG 1994 meeting, at which a strategic framework for the efficient and sustainable reform of the Australian water industry was agreed to. This framework was instrumental in the creation of the Water Management Act 2000 (NSW), and was renewed in the form of the National Water Initiative in 2004. More recently, this theme was manifest in the National Plan for Water Security in 2007, and found legislative expression in the Water Act 2007 (Cth) and its 2008 amendment.