The nation's water privatised

Peter Mac

State and federal leaders at last week's Council of Australian 
Governments(COAG) meeting in Canberra have for the first time in 
Australia's history agreed to hand over a huge proportion of the 
nation's river water to business interests as private 
property.

The agreement will at last increase the flow of the nation's 
biggest natural waterway, the Murray Darling river system. 
However, if this proves insufficient and more water needs to be 
allocated to saving the river environment — as is almost certain 
— the agricultural water owners will be compensated for 97 
percent of their loss of profits by state and federal 
governments!

In short, the taxpayers will have to pay these agribusinesses 
millions of dollars as compensation for doing absolutely nothing 
with a natural resource that quite literally falls to them from 
the sky.

Western Australia was the only state that rejected the deal, 
because its few positive attributes were focused on extra water 
flow and remedial works funding for the Murray- Darling river 
system, rather than for the western rivers.

The agreement fails to seriously address the issue of appropriate 
water use. Much of the COAG meeting's discussion involved 
restrictions on the use of water by households. These are 
certainly necessary for those of our major cities whose water 
storage is under severe threat. (Sydney's main water storage, the 
Warragamba Dam, is now at a record low, with less than 48 percent 
of capacity.)

However, the Prime Minister Howard went further, proposing that 
these restrictions should become permanent, rather than a 
temporary expedient. This smacks of penalising households, which 
in point of fact account for a mere nine percent of our total 
water consumption. Even the combined consumption of the 
electricity, gas, mining and manufacturing industries only 
constitutes 13 percent.

The biggest consumer of water in Australia is agriculture, which 
accounts for 67 percent of the total. And the biggest individual 
water-consuming industries are those involving cultivation of 
cotton (11.7 percent) and rice (7.8 percent). Although these two 
industries consume almost 20 percent of the nation's water, and 
make huge profits, they employ only a fraction of the 
agricultural workforce, which in itself comprises only four 
percent of the national total.

So you might think that a sane water use policy would involve 
phasing out these industries in favour of low water use 
agriculture. Not a bit of it! The "water summit" government 
leaders totally avoided such uncomfortable issues and instead 
decided to privatise our water resources, in the fond hope that 
the market will sort everything out.

It won't, of course. It will actually consolidate the position of 
the "water guzzlers". Among the biggest of these are the southern 
Queensland irrigators. They already have a huge infrastructure in 
place for drawing and holding water from the Bolonne River, which 
contributes to the Murray Darling system.

Under a water management plan to come into force later this year 
the water entitlements of the 40 biggest Balonne River irrigators 
will fall from 460 gigalitres to 380 gigalitres. This might seem 
like a big loss. However, the irrigators will still be entitled 
to an amount equivalent to 80 percent of the entire extra flow 
allocated to the Murray Darling system under the agreement.

Moreover, the amount of water these irrigators have been drawing 
is far in excess of their needs, since the bulk of it has gone to 
fill their massive water storage systems. The biggest irrigator, 
Cubbie Farm, is said to be able to hold 480 gigalitres (about the 
volume of Sydney Harbour). The right of these agribusinesses to 
hold so much water went totally unchallenged at the COAG meeting, 
and no one questioned whether highly irrigated crops such as rice 
or cotton should be grown in Australia at all.

The Balonne River irrigator conglomerates will be well-placed to 
ride out future droughts, and even to benefit from them since 
they will sell water to NSW farmers downstream, who thanks to the 
irrigators are now deprived of huge amounts of water.

The COAG agreement is just as cynical as the National Forests 
Agreement, which has handed over vast areas of our forests to the 
private sector, and the recently-announced national energy 
policy, which will provide massive financial assistance to the 
very industries that are polluting the atmosphere.

Whether the modest extra flow promised to the Murray Darling 
system will be sufficient to rectify its terrible environmental 
problems remains to be seen. But it is abundantly clear that the 
multinational agribusinesses are guaranteed to benefit from the 
agreement, and that it is the ordinary Australian people who will 
foot the bill.

* * *

Reference: Australian Bureau of Statistics Water Account,
Australia 2000-01