Consultative Committee

The then Minister for Water appointed a Consultative Committee of regional stakeholders to provide strategic guidance and oversight of the Strategy’s development. Its deliberations helped shape the required technical work and provide local perspective on the Strategy’s consultation, option development and assessment processes.

The Consultative Committee included representatives from local water corporations, catchment management authorities, local government, industry, agriculture and the environment.

The Consultative Committee comprised of:

• Independent Chair – Llew Vale
• South Gippsland Water – Steve Evans
• Southern Rural Water – Martin Kent/Clinton Rodda
• Gippsland Water – David Mawer
• East Gippsland Water – Les Mathieson
• Gippsland Coastal Board – Duncan Malcolm/Helen Martin
• Gippsland Lakes Taskforce – Barry Hart
• Environment Victoria – Leonie Duncan, Juliet LeFeuvre
• Gippsland Local Government Network – South representative – Andrew McEwen/Anthony Seabrook
• Gippsland Local Government Network – East representative – Steven Kozlowski
• Gippsland Local Government Network – Central representative – Paul Buckley
• East Gippsland CMA – Graeme Dear
• West Gippsland CMA – Geoff Hocking/Martin Fuller
• Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry and also
• National Generators Forum – Richard Elkington
• Victorian Farmers Federation/MCCC – David Hotchkin, Graeme Anderson/Iain Stewart
• DPI – Gippsland Regional – Greg Turner
• DSE – Gippsland Regional – Daniel Mainville 

Observers

• Danielle Auldist – GippsDairy
• Duncan Malcolm – Victorian Environment Assessment Council

Regional consultation

The Draft Gippsland Region Sustainable Water Strategy was released for community comment in September 2010. Following a three month public consultation period over 80 submissions were made on the proposals presented in the Draft Strategy. The submissions informed the development of the final Strategy (see Technical Paper 2). A series of public meetings were held across Gippsland to seek feedback to the Draft Strategy.

As part of developing the Strategy, working groups were established to provide recommendations to the Consultative Committee. The working groups included members from relevant water corporations, catchment management authorities and stakeholder groups.

A Discussion Paper was released prior to the Draft Strategy.  The Discussion Paper was released in July 2009 and sought community feedback on water related issues that helped inform the development of the Draft Strategy.

In preparing the Gippsland Region Sustainable Water Strategy, the Department of Sustainability and Environment consulted with the region’s Traditional Owners, summarised in Technical paper 1 of the final Strategy.

An Independent Panel was appointed by the Minister to consider comments made in the process of developing the Sustainable Water Strategy and report on findings.