Friday, 27 February 2026
BROADER WATER POLICY AND INDUSTRY OUTLOOK
From Reaction to Strategy: Charting a Smarter Water Future
Water policy in New South Wales has been shaped as much by controversy as by reform.
- Reflect on what the sector has learned – and perhaps unlearned – since Four Corners: Pumped thrust water management into the state spotlight.
- Explore the shifting regulatory, political and community landscape over the past eight years, examining how these dynamics have influenced compliance, trust and investment certainty
- Look forward and analyse the key elements of a genuinely strategic water future – one that strengthens accountability, supports productive water use and rebuilds confidence in the system that sustains regional Australia
Presented by Dr Madeleine Hartley, Chief Executive Officer, NSW Irrigators’ Council
Description
Attend and earn 0.5 CPD unit in Substantive Law
This program is based on NSW, VIC and SA legislation
* This interactive online recording includes questions and quizzes requiring critical thinking about the topics, so you have no annual limits to the number of points/hours you can claim with this format of learning. Please verify with your CPD rules
Chair
Mike Young, Professor Emeritus, School of Economics and Public Policy, University of Adelaide
Presenters
Dr Madeleine Hartley, Chief Executive Officer, NSW Irrigators’ Council
Dr Madeleine Hartley has a PhD in international water law from The University of Western Australia, was a visiting scholar in Colorado, has lectured in water law and international environmental law, and is a Fellow of the Peter Cullen Water and Environment Trust. Madeleine has worked in private practice, in-house legal, and now in regulatory strategy, and has experience in litigation and advice on all areas of water law and regulation across Australia. This has included major water litigation in Western Australia, reducing water law barriers to developing northern Australia, water reform in Western Australia and New South Wales, and matters involving water rights, use and policy in the Murray-Darling Basin. In 2019 Madeleine was the Lawyers Weekly Corporate Counsel Government Lawyer of the Year, and received the Corporate Counsel Excellence Award
Mike Young, Professor Emeritus, School of Economics and Public Policy, University of Adelaide
Mike Young is Professor Emeritus in Water and Environmental Policy at the University of Adelaide, was the Founding Executive Director of its Environment Institute, is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and is a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. Mike is a specialist in water policy reform and his research led to the unbundling of Australia’s water licences and the resultant development of an efficient trading system and the Australian Government decision to transfer responsibility for the administration of the Murray Darling Basin’s water resources to an independent expertise-based authority. He played a key role in establishing Australia’s National Land and Water Resources Audit. Mike has held the Gough Whitlam and Malcom Fraser Chair at Harvard University, has served on Global Water Partnership's Technical Committee and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Water Security. He was a founding member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. In 2006, Mike was awarded Australia’s premier water research prize – the Land and Water Australia Eureka Award for Water Research. He has played a critical role in the consideration of options for the Murray Darling Basin. Prior to joining the University of Adelaide, Mike spent 30 years with CSIRO where, amongst other things, he established their Policy and Economic Research Unit. In 2003, Mike was awarded a Centenary Medal “for outstanding service through environmental economics”. His full curriculum vitae lists over 240 publications.
