The Irrigation Price Review 2005-2006 included a two stage process which involved SunWater consulting extensively with customers and peak industry groups to establish efficient lower bound cost estimates on which the new irrigation tariffs are based.

The first stage invoved a Statewide Irrigation Pricing Working Group (Tier 1), a group of fifteen people consisting of SunWater's management, its customer base and peak industry, considering issues that needed to be consistently applied to all schemes to set prices in a fair and efficient way. The Tier 1 Group released a report in April 2006 outlining its key recommendations. Please follow this link for further information on the Tier 1 process.

The second stage of the price setting process involved the formation of working groups for each of the 26 schemes, known as Tier 2 or Scheme Irrigation Pricing Working Groups, which comprised SunWater representatives and customers of the scheme, to consider any scheme specific issues.

All 26 schemes identified their preferences on customer service standards, water use forecasts, form of price control (revenue cap or price cap) and tariff structures. Please follow this link for further information on the Tier 2 process.

Leading into the Irrigation Price Review, the state government, via the Department of Natural Resources and Water (NRW), released three discussion papers relating to irrigation water prices:

• Future rural water prices for SunWater schemes (Nov 2003)
• Local management of SunWater schemes (Nov 2003)
• Water resource charges (July 2004).

The Queensand Government released its rural water pricing policy for SunWater schemes in January 2006 which set the high level policy principles for the determination of the new irrigation price paths.