The study looks at the capacity of desert communities to afford to pay more for water under a National Water Initiative (NWI) directive to move to ‘full cost recovery for all rural surface and groundwater based systems’.

A team led by Drs Meryl Pearce and Assoc Professor Eileen Willis of DKCRC and Flinders University has investigated the ability of families living in four remote Aboriginal settlements in South Australia to afford to pay more for their water.

“We found that households in these communities were already spending between 80 and 130pc of their income on the basic necessities of life.

"Their incomes are already barely above the poverty line,” Dr Pearce says.

“If you imposed water charges on these households many would simply be unable to pay them.”

The unintended result of a decision taken far away to raise water charges could be to make communities which were already economically marginal, potentially unsustainable, she said.

The team notes that the NWI was put in place to achieve greater efficiency in water use across the whole of Australia.

The NWI recognises that some settlements will never be economically sustainable but nevertheless states that in such cases ‘lower bound pricing’ should apply, in line with National Competition Policy (NCP) requirements.

“It was recognised that these rules might have unfortunate consequences for remote settlements, which is why we were asked to examine and report on their situation,” Dr Pearce says.

The researchers argue that many remote desert communities are already – of necessity – highly efficient and sparing in their use of water, and their inhabitants are keenly aware too, of the need to minimise waste.

“Some of these small communities already have a lot of water and energy efficiencies in place, such as housing designed for passive cooling or the use of supplementary solar power.