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No sweetening the salty tale of water privatisation

By Acacia Rose - posted Friday, 25 November 2011


Water, the most precious of all natural resources on planet earth, once belonged in the prevail of 'the commons,' owned by the people at large, by the environment with its diverse range of habitats for wildlife - nesting and migratory birds, fish, reptiles, insects and native mammals - and available under riparian rights or licence, to farmers.

Cities, towns and villages also had reasonable 'water rights' with fair and sensible management of water utilities, and costs that arguably undervalued this most necessary of resources.

The evolution of the 'corporate' mentality and powerful Corporations Act 2001 has changed the concept and reality of public ownership of water and good governance forever.

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During the past decade, the complete phalanx of Labor Premiers appeared to have signed contracts for multi-billion dollar, energy intensive desalination plants that would connect their constituents to the profit-centric water grid and toxic debt repayment for decades to come.

Desal is costly, to the people and the environment! After formerly rejecting a proposed 'water factory' for economic and environmental reasons, NSW Premier Bob Carr then announced in Dubai, that Sydney would get its very own desal plant. Carr knew that industrial water was environmentally damaging and expensive, famously coining the phrase 'drinking bottled electricity.'

Western Australia had already flagged its own desalination plant and Queensland planned a plant for the Gold Coast, while Adelaide joined hands with AdelaideAqua, a multinational consortium formed in 2009 for the very same purpose. Victoria launched its own $5.7 billion Public Private Partnership (PPP), for a desal plant.

Amongst the private players are the international water giant Suez (recently Suez lost its contract to supply Adelaide's water due to overpricing) and Macquarie Capital (also a major water privatisation investor). To complete the international flavour of industrial water in Australia is the presence of the French owned water baron Veolia along with controversial Halliburton, the latter involved in businesses that range from the supply of arms and bottled water for troops, to exploration and 'fracking' for coal seam gas in Australia.

The 'corporatisation decade' has salted the once sweet taste of clean, publicly owned water and the guarantee of well-maintained, safe and affordable public water utilities.

The era of 'public service' has long passed and along with it, democratic processes and 'best-practice' water governance. The voracious contemporary global corporates with their lucrative and complex mix of interests from exploration for oil, to 'ground water mining,' to engineering and ownership of major metropolitan water and sewerage utilities, easily partner with willing governments who chant repetitively 'jobs' whilst signing away the peoples' ownership of precious resources.

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Consumers, once the 'owners' of the most precious of all resources, water, no longer have a voice or even a toe in the door of parliament. To cap the unstoppable tide of water privatisation has proven impossible more so with the recent revelations of profits flowing directly to Labor Party politicians.

Water privatisation is hidden within complex state government water agreements, 'buy backs' and overpriced irrigation and 'water savings' plans. The cash grab in the water sector however, crosses the political divide. In June 2003 the former National Party Leader John Anderson unveiled Coalition plans for water trading inexorably tying farm prosperity - at least as a concept - to water trading. John Anderson attempted to reassure Australians that it would ridiculous to expect for example, 'that there would be a Hong Kong investor willing to purchase then sit on Australia's water rights.'

Nothing could be further from the truth. The stunning and bold entry of China into the natural and mineral resources market in Australia demonstrates how easily politicians 'give away' Australia's wealth - politicising and casting wealth from minerals as a 'tax' rather than payment, water trading as a 'market' rather than threat to food security, and long-term domestic water supplies married to moderate perspectives on a sustainable population.

Soon after the stunning revelation of plans to privatise Australia's water resources, NSW began the process of separating land and water rights, robbing landowners of natural water rights and divesting agricultural wealth through establishing a lucrative, and clearly to small landholders, unaffordable price for tradeable water.

According to a revealing radio interview by the ABC's Peta Donald with National Party Bill Heffernan, the major banks were pushing government to privatise Australia's water. There was no public discussion. There was no referendum YES or NO question or answer as to whether Australian people wanted to privatise their precious water resources or not.

The banks, governments and key politicians plucked water from its status tied to the land as a natural resource, connected to ancient aquifers, ground and surface water, to vast and vulnerable interconnected catchments and their respective streams and rivers, and turned it into a tradeable commodity.

As 'the market' found the right price for water, suddenly, thousands of farmers woke up to discover the non-permanent nature of water licences or entitlements, the over supply of 'licences' and the potential or actual 'stranding' of irrigation assets and therefore, farms and communities. The only way to survive in the brave new water world was to bulk buy as a part of an irrigation consortium.

By June 2009, the Murray Darling Basin Authority took a step further than its conceptual role as an independent best governance, best practice water manager and announced that along with limiting the amount of surface and ground water that could be extracted from the Basin, it would commence water trading.

The States would see the guarantee of their rights to water under Section 100 of the Australian Constitution or equivalent powers, yet would have to abide by the Basin Plan. Soon the dirty depths of cross party politics would be plumbed as the Coalition hijacked the intense mood of farmers who were on the bitter end of an arguably poor communications and education process and saw the proposed Murray Darling Basin Plan and the 'Guide' as no more than a savaging of their water rights, their farms and communities, their livelihoods and regions.

The Coalition cleverly coupled themselves to sequential 'bible burnings' setting the tone for future negotiations. Environment groups rallied to identify and describe minimum sustainable diversions or in the parlance of the report; 'Sustainable Diversion Limits' from the Murray Darling Basin putting themselves directly at odds with the heavily over-capitalised, major corporate agribusinesses who relied directly on water security. The battle lines were drawn across the increasingly salinized soils of the Murray Darling Basin.

Then the rains came. The heavens opened and for two glorious La Nina seasons. The waters flowed from the catchments and sub catchments, from the Murray Darling Basin and its sub-basins filling and overspilling dams and weirs and pouring liquid gold, the unstoppable flow into the wetlands and Murray all the way to the starved Coorong, dousing its acid sulphate soils in fresh runoff.

The Snowy River, dying an agonizing death of 99% extraction for more than 40 years, and struggling under the complex and porous Snowy Water Licence, saw its promised environmental flows traded away at times it appears, as direct allocations for irrigation. No matter the rain, the Upper Snowy River remains totally dead below the all-capturing Island Bend Dam wall. Not a single politician or public servant in the country has the clear will to open the gates at Island Bend and let the Snowy flow.

The Snowy below Jindabyne flowed for the beleaguered Victorian Labor Premier John Brumby crumbling under the weight of controversial irrigation and over priced desal projects. The Snowy River did not help Brumby win the 2010 Victorian State Election even though he came into power on the strength of the Snowy and the election of the key Independent Craig Ingram. An enduring sign of the contempt for 'the environment' by the Snowy water manager Snowy Hydro, is the fencing off of any access to the Jindabyne Dam wall. That fence remains in place after the 2011 spring flows, symbolically imprisoning the river and blocking public access to their iconic Snowy.

Now, with the revelations of the alleged corruption of Labor politicians seeping to the surface through long overdue media exposure, Australians find themselves sucking on the salty plum of expensive and unwanted, foreign owned water infrastructures.

The burden of debt will continue for decades.

John Anderson is wrong. The brave new world of water barons, the globalisation of natural resources, the privatisation and trading of water, air and carbon means that no farmer can rely on any guarantee for any crop unless he or she pays a premium for high security water.

Factored into the costs are the myriad of fees and charges. Factored into water utility and sewerage charges are the repayments on the dozen or so desalination plants mooted for Australia. Factored into the bitter medicine for the dry country, are undoubtedly the millions in windfalls for the politicians who oiled the wheels of water privatisation. Factored into the plan for Australia is the secretive privatisation of our most precious resource – water.

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About the Author

Acacia Rose continues to campaign to stop the sale of the Snowy Hydro and ran as Independent Candidate for Eden-Monaro in the 2007 Federal Election. She is the Alpine Riverkeeper and member of the Waterkeepers Alliance and a member of the Snowy River Alliance. Books by Acacia Rose: Wind Horse series - set in the Snowy Mountains. Midnight Pearl, Azure Moon.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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