What if, instead of five government jurisdictions – QLD, NSW, ACT, VIC, SA – there was one?

 

Instead of five bureaucracies, one?

 

What if the arbitrary lines drawn on a map over a century ago aren’t as fixed as we assume?

 

What if, instead of being based on similarly arbitrary lines, Council regions were based around

river catchments, responsible for their river from headwaters to mouth – a Macquarie River Council,

a Kiewa River Council, a Warrego River Council?

What if, instead of 126 Councils in the Basin, we had a quarter of that?

 

What if we saw the Basin, not as a compartmentalised, divisible entity, but as one integrated system?

That the people of Toowoomba are connected to the people in Tailem Bend, by the very same water?

 

What if the most important food and water resource in the driest inhabited continent

was managed by the people who live in that system, who understand it? Instead of

decisions made by policymakers living outside the Basin - in Sydney, Brisbane, and

Melbourne - they were made by those who live with the consequences of their decisions.

 

What if a new Basin State were modelled on the relationship with the

land developed over millennia by the original custodians?

That in the underlying principle of the Brewarrina fish traps we

have the template for mutual responsibility, shared knowledge,

contribution and respect? Created through the co-operation of

many tribes, they're designed to trap enough fish for the people to

survive, and let the rest continue along the river to the next tribe.

What if we used this approach to water? That instead of the

tragedy of the commons, we would have the triumph.

 

What if Australia was the first country in the world to arrange its regions

of governance around a natural resource? That in doing so, we solve that intractable

problem of intergenerational responsibility - whereby everything we do flows downstream,

literally and figuratively – by overlaying the system of governance onto the natural system,

synchronising our society with the land it depends upon.

 

What if, instead of persisting with a system that no longer makes sense, we created one that does,

for the land and its people – Refederation.