How regulators are responding to water theft — and even watching irrigators from space

Water theft burst into the national consciousness back in 2017 with a Four Corners story detailing alleged illegal pumping of water from the Murray-Darling river system and regulation failure by the New South Wales government.

This was occurring against a backdrop of governments attempting to move from systematic over-allocation of water in a relatively dry catchment. While taxpayers were paying to buy back water rights to stave off environmental collapse, some producers were taking water they were not entitled to.