Selling us down the river

The country has been turned into a coal grabbing free-for-all. Thousands of coal seam gas bores pincushion the Murray Darling Basin, Liverpool Plains, huge areas of Western Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales. And Victoria boasts the world's dirtiest brown coal power station at Yallourn.

Coal and coal seam gas are just two of the greatest threats to our water resources. Coal is a double whammy. Water is lost and/or polluted when the stuff in mined, then water supplies are further stressed when coal is burned creating coal ash heaps which mix with rain and groundwater to pollute supplies. This pollution can even cause serious illnesses. All to make a few wealthy people even wealthier. The joke of coal royalties being a bonus and the jobs created being a plus is such shabby logic. (Newcastle University has produced comparative benefit studies on coal and alternative energy.)

Long-wall coal shearers are powering away in countless sites all over Australia destroying groundwater supplies and polluting standing watercourses. If the coal is where the groundwater is, then tough.

The Rudd sell-out on the issue of “the greatest moral challenge of our time” has left the Gillard government with a choice. Does Gillard opt for statesmanship? It appears we are about to get another 2020 show. A Citizen’s Assembly this time, lots of coloured pens, butcher’s paper and "drilling down". Most likely, key sessions will be "facilitated" by the forces of darkness raised and nurtured by the energy lobby. Half a day with these fellows and a stout-hearted, clear headed attendee will swear black is pink.

We just can't afford another squib. If we are “moving forward” right into the teeth of another flip flop, the consequences will be too ugly to contemplate.

Owing to a near total desertion on this front by the Australian media not too many Australians have the slightest idea why water and climate management are so critical.

In the vacuum of neglect the run has been made by self- interest. A triumph of spin: corporate fudge by the energy misinformation wizards.

More than one third of the world's water is now in the hands of massive water conglomerates. Last year the trade in global water was nearly 75 per cent the value of oil trade. Huge global corporates with annual turnovers ten times that of the GDP of many countries are after the world's water. This is done via the ruse of Private, Public Partnerships (PPPs) and a thousand other smoke and mirror means.

Big water boys already own a lot of Australia's water, mainly via foreign owned agri-businesses and deals with municipal authorities. They also have the controlling say in dozens and dozens of PPP's.

How has it come to this: bean counters pretending to know what they are doing about water management? How did they get water stewardship in the first place: a deranged fixation allowing everything to be determined by the global money market? When the bottom fell out of the market, the taxpayers bailed the ratters out.

Giving the pirates control over world water supplies (including Australia's in the next 18 months) is akin to leaving Jack the Ripper in charge of the autopsy. (See Global Access Partners Report: Exec Summary.)

Water: the new oil is a vital and valuable commodity. The disaster we see all around us, so often blamed on the drought, is a blind, blinkered determination to hijack water, for corporate exploitation.