Advocacy Strategy prepared for Lower Burdekin Water

Advocacy Strategy

Client: Lower Burdekin Water Board

Background:

This organisation manages the replenishment of the large coastal aquifer in the Burdekin region to prevent salt intrusion and to help assure the quality of subterranean water supplies drawn for agriculture, industry and domestic purposes. For over 20 years the Board has relied on arrangements negotiated with the Queensland Government for access to supplies from the Burdekin River involving commercial and concessional pricing.

Recently the basis of these arrangements has been questioned by other stakeholders and the Board engaged Reinforcements to help develop a suitable advocacy strategy to explain its position.

What we did

Given the complexity of the Board’s responsibilities and the range of stakeholders, our first task was to work with Board members and management to clearly articulate the key issues surrounding the matter of water allocations. A workshop with key participants was used to formulate a comprehensive profile of the financial, environmental and service issues facing the Board and the relationship between those issues and the various government, consumer and industry groups dependent on the effective operation of the Board’s activities.

This was followed by the development of appropriate and articulate messages to explain the Board’s position and the importance of its role in producing key policy and service outcomes for the region and the State.

This resulted in our being able to formulate for the Board a suite of strategic documents, including:

an overarching advocacy strategy;
a stakeholder engagement strategy; and
a communications strategy.

Results

The Advocacy Strategy outlined for the Board a range of initiatives involving key stakeholders including an action plan to implement the engagement and communication strategies. The Board set in train the initial actions and found responses to be very favourable in a short space of time.

A particularly pleasing result was the clarity of understanding achieved with key government officials in relation to the issues concerning the Board’s role in assisting environmental outcomes.

Whilst the engagement and communication strategies are ongoing the benefits to the Board of undertaking the development of the overall advocacy strategy have been immediately apparent.

TALK WITH US