Infrastructure Partnerships Australia (IPA) and the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) jointly released a report today entitled “Doing the important, as well as the urgent: reforming the urban water sector”.
The report is a call for national policy leadership regarding urban water, and argues that this would elevate urban water policy above the urgent decisions made amidst a crisis—allowing instead for an approach based on good governance, long term planning and greater responsiveness to customer preferences.
The three central recommendations focus around better economic regulation, appropriate opportunities to deploy competition and clarification of governance arrangements. In particular, economic regulation is currently varied throughout the states, and the report suggests a nationally consistent framework would promote competition, provide the right incentives to businesses and improve choice and services for consumers.
Frontier (Australia) advises many clients in the water sector and assisted the IPA and WSAA in the development of the report.
For more information, please contact Marita O’Keeffe on m.okeeffe@frontier-economics.com.au or phone +61 3 9620 4488.
