COMMENT
The development of northern Australia has been on the political agenda for close to a century.
The policy focus has been on how best to capture and exploit huge volumes of water that run into the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Arafura Sea and the Timor Sea and are therefore "wasted".
The vision was building a northern Australian food bowl right on the doorstep of a rapidly growing Asian middle class.
The outcome has been a series of cropping trials with varying degrees of success.
Getting crops to grow was one thing.
Getting the economics right and addressing logistical challenges was another hurdle.
But the opportunity to develop northern Australia into the sustainable powerhouse it could be continues to be missed.
In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on research in the region, with the CSIRO building a very detailed picture of the north's land, river and artisan systems and marine environment.
This work has underpinned much more informed decision-making about what to grow, where to grow it and how to get it to market - while protecting the region's natural landscape.
Policy makers and stakeholders now understand that a network of dams across the north alone is not the answer to the region's future economic and social needs.
In fact, if mismanaged, water capture systems can fail to deliver sustainable production outcomes and fail to protect what is an ancient landscape.
We need a holistic approach.
Indigenous landholders, the tourist industry and the fishing industry now sit beside beef production as key stakeholders in northern Australia.
Their interests are interrelated and interdependent.
For example, the Mitchell, Gilbert and Flinders River catchments which are critical to the health and productivity of key commercial fisheries in the Gulf of Carpentaria, present opportunities for sustainable economic development through irrigated cropping.
In what is the first big step towards this holistic approach, the northern pastoral industry and the northern prawn fishery have formed the Northern Australia Natural Resource Partnership (NANRP).
The Partnership aims to work with government and other stakeholders to both build sustainable production systems across the northern pastoral estate and protect the marine environment.
The Partnership sees the National Landcare Program Phase 3 as best placed in terms of the design, cost and delivery of this support.
Pastoral leaseholders pay a fee for the use of their land for beef production.
They also invest in natural assets and building natural capital, which incurs costs outside the terms of their lease and private contributions for the wider public good.
A better alignment between landcare programs and the sustainable management of natural assets through National Landcare Program phase 3 could correct this public/private funding imbalance.
Importantly, the Partnership approach would also provide an opportunity for stakeholders to co-design projects.
It also offers government the opportunity to rebalance the geographical spread of landcare funding.
This is heavily skewed towards the south east of the continent and away from the highly productive north west.
A Centre for Conservation Geography study shows expenditure across the Northern Territory of 10 cents per hectare.
In the Western Australian rangelands region, the spend is 5c/ha.
In contrast, landcare funds into south east Queensland averaged $3.22/ha and are $4.08/ha in Victoria.
The Partnership has proposed a government/stakeholder taskforce be established to develop this whole-of-region model and to inform the design of the National Landcare Program phase 3.
That sounds like a sensible plan.
