INTERPRETACIÓN Y ANÁLISIS DE LA FASE CUALITATIVA

7.2.1

Injustice in the NSW carry-over water study

Injustice in process and outcome: the way it was done; the water was ours

While the original intention of this research was to explore perceptions of fairness and justice in a social conflict, I found that widespread perceptions of injustice and unfairness were at the core of the social conflict in the NSW carry-over water study. As described in Chapter 5, people's perceptions of the issue at the heart of the protest varied according to their own circumstances, but there was widespread concern across the community and this was not restricted to material or financial concerns: it also included social and personal aspects of what was happening within the community. While the core issue was a perceived violation of a property right—"the heart of the protest is that the water was ours"—the way the irrigation community had been treated was perceived to be equally important by many, resulting in high levels of dissatisfaction and strong personal expressions of emotions. Many community members described the action by the government as both unfair and unjust when asked to summarise their thoughts about the management of the carry-over water issue. These summaries included such descriptions as "grossly unfair"; "unfair and poorly managed"; "extremely unfair"; "justice has not been done" and "there is no fairness or any justice in what has happened".

There was perceived injustice in the outcome of the decision, with nuances about how the cutbacks were unfairly allocated amongst different groups of irrigators; perceived injustice in the way irrigators had not been informed or included in the decision-making process "it was the way it was done, not why it was done”; perceived injustice in the way the community had not been treated with respect, "a complete contempt", and perceived injustice in the way the government responded with its Extraordinary Assistance Package following the protest (Chapter 4). There were several perceived injustices with this package. The first was that the government response was a general response, not a specific response to the issue. The package did not provide direct compensation for each Megalitre of water taken from each irrigator. Instead the package offered general financial assistance to any farmer who could demonstrate financial hardship. Second, the amount was capped at $50,000, perceived by many to be inadequate in relation to their actual loss. Third, the administrative process to apply for this package was perceived to be unnecessarily complex.

These different perceptions of injustice amount to a series of separate injustices, all related to the original water cutback, but each taking on a separate identity. Connections between these key perceived injustices and the different types of justice (procedural, interactional and distributive) are summarised in Table 7.4. While the injustice of inequitable burdens was central to the conflict, the importance of interactional justice and procedural justice was clearly portrayed by the calls for respectful treatment, recognition, information and inclusion.

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Table 7.4 Perceptions of injustice in the NSW carry-over water study

Perception of injustice Type of justice violated

Lack of notification, information and involvement Procedural justice Lack of respect in the way people were treated Interactional justice Perceived entitlement /property removed Distributive justice Burden of cutback inequitably distributed amongst

irrigator groups

Distributive justice Lack of recognition of actual harm done Distributive justice Equitable compensation not offered Distributive justice Inequity of Extraordinary Assistance Package Distributive justice

No recognition of harm

Emerging from this research is the idea that the way in which the material, social and personal impacts of the carry-over water cutbacks were perceived by many as being interwoven, and contributing to a sense of harm to the current and future well-being of the community. As described in Chapter 5, the impact of the carry-over water cutbacks was wide-ranging across the community. While there was clearly an obvious direct material impact to those irrigators who had lost water in the cutbacks, there was also a range of social and personal impacts as the implications of the government decision became apparent throughout the community. The social and personal impacts had affected relationships, personal beliefs and people's confidence in the future in relation to the stability and structure of the community. Three business community leaders described the overall impact as a demoralisation, an erosion of confidence and destabilisation of the community:

The carry-over issue affects even the people not directly impacted, because there is an emotional impact—demoralization—because of the process itself.

I put confidence under a personal banner. We are struggling to keep the confidence level up with all these changes… we need some sort of belief in the future.

It has hurt the community because it has destabilised the community. What underpins communities is partly the ability of people to be optimistic, to be positive about the future, therefore they are prepared to invest. Yet that action has destabilised those things.

A perceived injustice here was that none of these impacts had been recognized as such by the government, nor was the actual harm that had been done recognized as harm, which in many cases could be irreversible. As one community leader put it: "farmers have been crucified". The failure to recognize the value of the water to the irrigator at the time of the cutbacks was seen as a clear and obvious example of this lack of recognition. That the government had offered to

replace the water in a future year was described as unrealistic and further evidence of the lack of understanding of the actual impact of the cutbacks. However, the actual harm extended further than material harm. The actual harm was also experienced within the community in terms of damage to the social structure of the community as described in the quotations by community leaders above. As many interviewees had commented, the social structure of the community depended on the well-being and health of the community.

One aspect of this well-being depended on co-operation and a shared understanding of community life and needs between the rural community and city-based government agencies. But there had been a gradual erosion in the common understanding of rural matters, with the withdrawal of government agencies from the area along with a perceived decline in community well-being. With the government withdrawal was an associated loss of people from the area who had contributed much to the social and intellectual capital of the community as well as contributing to dialogue and understanding between city-based and rural government agencies. That this harm to the community's viability was not recognized by governments in their cost- cutting measures was clear to some interviewees. One interviewee commented on the general lack of government willingness to recognize the social impacts of government decisions:

in 10 years there has never been a true socio-economic impact study done along the Murray River on the changes to water management

For this interviewee the carry-over water cutback was yet another decision made by a government that didn't understand how their decisions actually impacted communities: "these are things that bureaucrats don't understand". Interestingly, while very clearly articulating her beliefs about the way governments treated rural communities—"rural communities are rarely treated with respect: if there are no votes in it then we don't count"—this interviewee also thought that the term "fairness" was not applicable to the carry-over situation. She thought that a better way to describe it would be "badly managed" because "what is fair isn't always relevant when you get to a desperate situation and the drought has caused a desperate situation". However, she felt that the government had demonstrated "ignorance of the issue, which is not an excuse" and that "there was certainly not fairness".

This interviewee's perspective on fairness shows the complexity of their context and the way in which some members of the community perceived the carry-over issue within the broader and longer-term context of water management and rural-government relations. In contrast to other interviewees, this community leader did not use the term unfair to describe the handling of the specific carry-over water process: for her the unfairness was rather a long- standing lack of recognition whereby the community was not considered within the overall picture and not treated with respect. This interviewee's perspective stands out for two reasons: first, in the way she did not perceive the handling of the carry-over process as unfair, preferring

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to use the term "badly managed"; and second, because she perceived unfairness in how water management as a whole was managed by the government.

7.2.2

Injustice in the Victoria pipeline study

With the emergence of injustice in the NSW case study, interviewees in the second case study were asked directly what they understood by the term "injustice" in the abstract. This question was posed immediately after interviewees had talked about their abstract conceptions of "fairness" and "justice".

Abstract conceptions of injustice

Interviewees in the Victoria pipeline study generally had little hesitation in describing their thoughts on "injustice". There was a diversity of responses which largely fall into four categories (Table 7.5).

Table 7.5 Interviewee conceptions of injustice in the Victoria study

1 Injustice as harm or disadvantage

"when one area is going to be disadvantaged to the benefit of another area" 2 Injustice as unfair, not right or where the justice system has failed

"when it is not fair, not right"; " when something is morally indefensible" 3 Injustice as unfair treatment

" when somebody is not a listened to or considered important enough to be listened to" 4 Injustice as power

"when a group of people think they are above the law and they can do what they like"

In the first category, injustice is seen either as causing harm or some disadvantage to a person or group of people or as a required action not being taken when such a harm has been done. For example, one interviewee described injustice as "something that you start to react to, it provokes people to stand up and start fighting for their rights, when people perceive themselves as being victims of injustice it provokes a response". Another described it as "taking something away from someone that you are not supposed to". One interviewee compared injustice to bad luck: "injustice would have to be dependent on the context, it is formally delivered rather than just natural bad luck". Another described it as "where it affects somebody enormously, emotionally or financially, where they have no say or input". These conceptions of injustice imply that there is an agent causing the injustice which results in harm or disadvantage to those affected by it. Along the same lines one interviewee suggested that injustice was "where rules are imposed on people to suit the majority and minority falls through the cracks" implying that injustice could occur through democratic processes.

In the second category, injustice is conceptualised as failure of the justice system or where an action has been taken that is perceived to be not right or unfair. Interviewee responses

suggest that injustice is: "where the justice system has failed, for example with David Hicks" (referring to the case of David Hicks, the Australian held in Guantanamo Bay prison); "outside the justice system and is similar to being unfair" and "when people have not been treated fairly". One interviewee suggested that injustice could occur within the legal system "where laws are rigorously applied without taking into account the individual circumstances". In the third category, people thought that injustice was related to how people were treated such as "being lied to"; "when somebody is not listened to" and "when the state pulls tricks on you without having a talk to you". Another interviewee suggested that injustice took place "when people close their minds, when they lose the ability to look sideways and see other people's points of view". Finally, in the fourth category, injustice as power was suggested, for example, "when a group of people think that they are above the law and they can do what they like". Another suggested that injustice is "to do with misinformation, where the government is misleading the public".

In summary, for many interviewees injustice represented harm or disadvantage caused by an external agent, whether this was the government or another community group. For others it was more about something that was wrong or perceived unfairness in the way that someone had been dealt with. Several interviewees thought that injustice was to do with the way people are treated and finally, some thought that it was when one group of people exerted power over another group of people. From these conceptions of the term "injustice" in the Victoria pipeline study it can be seen that there are strong contextual influences in the way people thought about injustice and what it meant to them. For example, the interviewee who was concerned about "misinformation" had been working—largely unsuccessfully—to obtain detailed information from various government agencies about the proposed water savings in the irrigation area. The interviewee who described injustice as "disadvantage" to the benefit of another area was strongly against taking water from the Goulburn River system to benefit people in the city of Melbourne who she believed had other options.

Injustice in process and outcomes: shabby treatment; flawed policy

As in the NSW carry-over water study, there were widespread perceptions of unfairness and injustice in the Victoria pipeline study. Also similar to the NSW study, perceptions of injustice in the Victoria study due to government action ranged from the way people were treated, the way the process was conducted to the decisions and proposed outcomes. These perceptions of injustice and the associated type of justice violated are summarised in Table 7.6., with the three types of justice carried forward from Chapter 2. As reviewed in Chapter 6 there was a broad-based criticism of the way the government had approached the two combined projects and how the communities had been treated. Most interviewees acknowledged that the government had not handled the project well, particularly in the way that it was introduced, and many described some aspect of the process or outcome as unjust or unfair. Even people in favour of the combined project recognized that there were injustices in both the way people had

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been dealt with and in some areas of the final outcome. Which type of injustice was perceived as important varied according to each interviewee: some felt more strongly about the outcome itself, for example taking water away from the environment; whereas some were more concerned about the way they had been treated, individually and as members of a community.

Table 7.6 Perceptions of injustice in the Victoria pipeline study relating to the government action

Perception of injustice Type of justice violated

Disdainful treatment of affected communities Interactional justice To break an election promise and lie in meetings Interactional justice Lack of consultation regarding initiation of pipeline and

irrigation modernisation project

Procedural justice Lack of information on pipeline and water savings Procedural justice To continue the process with inadequate consultation Procedural justice Lack of an environmental assessment which considers

the pipeline and irrigation upgrade together

Procedural justice Impact on the environment: removal of water from river

system and loss of water flow

Distributive justice Proposal based on unsatisfactory justification of "need"

by Melbourne when other options for increasing Melbourne water supply have not been fully explored

Distributive justice

To remove water from irrigators who have paid for it through their annual fees and capital purchase

Distributive justice To base the project on future water savings that are

unvalidated and contested

Distributive justice

Interactional injustice was perceived in the way individuals, communities and local government had been treated through being excluded from planning processes and from implications by government spokespeople that their views and issues were less important than Melbourne's need for water. The way government officials had been perceived to have broken election promises and lied in meetings were injustices felt at the personal level by those who attended the meetings. Procedural injustice was perceived in the way the concepts were conceived and turned into public policy and decisions made without full consultation of those affected. The lack of information and reluctance to provide details about the pipeline and water savings were perceived to be procedurally unjust. This procedural injustice was compounded with the "contrived" and "unbalanced" approach perceived by interviewees to the environmental assessment in which there was no overall environmental assessment thought to have been done by the government on the overall movement of water.

Distributive injustice was perceived in many areas ranging from the immediate outcome to what people could see were hidden and future injustices. There was injustice to landholders affected by the pipeline who had already been subjected to the outcome of uncertainty regarding how the pipeline would affect their property. Irrigators perceived an injustice because water

availability for irrigation would be reduced in spite of their entitlement and that they paid annual fees for the water. Many different stakeholders perceived an injustice to the environment, such as through loss of water in the river system, through extra greenhouse gases generated by the pipeline pumping stations and through destruction of woodland habitat for the pipeline. The basis for the proposal was disputed and perceived to be unjust by those who believed that neither the "need" for Melbourne had been established nor had the water savings been validated. Thus some perceived that the proposal would have hidden injustices that would manifest themselves in the future when the impact of the unrealised savings became apparent. Ratepayers in Melbourne and rural areas would bear the cost of the infrastructure by paying more for water.

Ripples of injustice through the community

The state government of Victoria was heavily criticised for the action or inaction associated with these perceived injustices. But blame for all instances of injustice did not rest with the government alone. As described in Chapter 6, the government announcement of the pipeline and infrastructure upgrade was the start of a series of events which led to further