Water Minister Tanya Plibersek has released the “Roadmap” document accepting Australia’s water trading markets are “a market-design car-crash” and backed the findings of the long-awaited ACCC report. Authors of Sold Down the River, Stuart Kells and Scott Hamilton, report.
Commonwealth legislation on water market behaviour governance and integrity is still very much a ‘work in progress’, or perhaps even a twinkle in the Treasurer’s eye. Like so many other integrity issues, it is in the too-hard basket. But now is the time to act. Water is abundant, tempers have been cooled, and greater attention is being applied to the complex challenge of balancing the competing uses of water and our river system. Waiting till the next drought might seem easy, but it will make reform many times harder.
What began as an informal arrangement between neighbouring farmers, where one farm’s surplus water could be transferred to another, has over the past two decades morphed into a complex set of commodity markets whose annual turnover exceeds A$1.8 billion.
Source: Robber barons and high-speed traders dominate Australia’s water market
Duxton Water executives have been boasting about “beautiful” structural imbalances in Australia’s water market, and potentially dazzling profits from drought. Corporate nut farming is thirsty business and the proliferation of almond farms is poised to whip up prices and crush traditional agriculture in Australia’s food bowl, reports Callum Foote.
In correspondence between an employee and Dow regarding a query by Guardian Australia on available aqueous sources, it was suggested “we do not give [the paper] anything more than what is already on the public record from us. They are clearly struggling to work out where we are getting our water, so I don’t think we give them any further clarity.” Dow approved of the measure.
Source: Let the Vandalism Begin: Adani Strikes Coal – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The NSW Liberals and Nationals have snuck through floodplain harvesting legislation that allows upstream irrigators to take up to five times (500 %) their licensed water allotments, potentially devastating the already fragile Murray Darling system. Callum Foote reports.
War for Water: foreign investor firepower over Australian farmers in water deals – Michael West
The “corporatisation” of Australian farming continues apace. Almost 14% of agricultural land is now owned by foreign investors who, according to a ruling by the ATO, do not have to pay capital gains tax on water rights. Callum Foote reports.
War for Water: foreign investor firepower over Australian farmers in water deals – Michael West
Same water, same valuer, $80m and nought. The same type of water licences for irrigation properties near those for which the Coalition government paid $80 million in 2017 were valued at zero between 2008 and 2010, writes investigative reporter Kerry Brewster in this exclusive report.
Barnaby Joyce signed off $80m for Angus Taylor’s old company after zero was paid for same sort of water nearby – Michael West
“Showerheads—you take a shower, the water doesn’t come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So what do you do?” he said during a July 16 speech at the White House. “You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair — I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect. Perfect.”
History repeats itself and has done for over 200 years. Aborigines had less than 1% of bank loans, jobs, capital gains education health. What has changed. They even have less than 1% of the acknowledged history an and Culture of this country. They have been effectively cancelled. (ODT)
Aboriginal people hold less than 1% of all water licences, a form of dispossession that needs urgent redress, researchers say
via Australia’s water market is excluding Indigenous people, study finds | Australia news | The Guardian
The Angus Taylor Plan of Economic Management (ODT)
Rinehart’s climate change denialism is well known, and she is reportedly and unsurprisingly amongst those voices that argue that 99% of the Fitzroy River’s water is wasted because it flows into the Indian Ocean.
Meanwhile, at the time of writing, Australia was experiencing catastrophic fire conditions across the Eastern seaboard. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the 11 November 2019 was the first day on record that no rain fell anywhere across the entire expanse of this vast continent. The north of Australia, like the rest of the country, is in the grip of drought.
via Water Barons: Gina Rinehart pitches cattle against sawfish – Michael West
The current drought in Eastern Australia has focused the attention of all Australians on water but effective policy responses are missing in action. Isn’t it time to call it a water emergency? Quentin Grafton and John Williams report.
via Declaring a water emergency means putting people before profit – Michael West
“To us, this inevitably means fruit and nut crops.” 1kg of almonds takes 860 liters of water to grow (ODT)
And big corporations are among those trying to cash in on it.
In farming country just north of Shepparton in northern Victoria, multi-million dollar agricultural investment corporation goFarm is buying up properties all over the district.
Documents obtained by the ABC from The Weekly Times show the company wants to control at least half of the Katunga Deep Lead Aquifer, an important groundwater resource for local farmers.
At what cost has always been the question asked but never answered by the LNP (ODT)
A cotton farmer has pleaded guilty to illegally pumping water from the Murray-Darling Basin, after he was charged following an ABC Four Corners investigation.
Fake News this is Fake
The industry spends billions of dollars per year convincing Americans that bottled water is safer than tap—even though more than two-thirds of the product comes from municipal water sources
via Research Exposes $16 Billion Bottled Water Industry’s Predatory Marketing Practices
The situation is escalating quickly.
Source: Militarized Police Turn Peaceful Native American Protest Into a War Zone
Settlers are trying to spin water shortages as a problem that affects both Palestinians and Jews in the same manner. That couldn’t be further from the truth. By Dror Etkes The recent reports on water crisis in Palestinian areas of the West Bank were accompanied by a story of another water shortage: this time in Israeli settlements. Let’s get one thing straight — there has never been a “water shortage” in the settlements. When settlers open up the tap at home or in their garden, the amount and quality of the water is identical to that which comes out in…
Source: Using stolen water to irrigate stolen land | +972 Magazine
A new analysis reveals that global water scarcity is a far greater problem than previously thought, affecting 4 billion people—two-thirds of the world’s population—and will be “one of the most difficult and important challenges of this century.”
According to Business Insider, the bottled water industry “grossed a total of $11.8 billion on 9.7 billion gallons [of water] in 2012…” equivalent to 2,000 times the cost of tap water per gallon and the regular cost of gasoline. PepsiCo’s Aquafina brand was discovered to …
Source: PepsiCo’s Bottled ‘Tap’ Water 2000 Times the Cost of a Gallon of Gas AnonHQ
The Utopia homelands was once one of the healthiest Indigenous communities. Now it’s plagued by scabies because of water shortages. And that’s just the beginning
Two weeks ago, reports emerged that the Utopia Homelands, a Northern Territory Indigenous community put in the spotlight by John Pilger’s recent film, was suffering acute water shortages after a bore at Amengernternenh collapsed during council maintenance works. The Urapuntja health service and several communities have had little to no access to water and sanitation for 10 whole weeks. Fifty kids have no drinking water at their school.
Australia is a wealthy country and the idea of entire communities not having proper access to clean water is unthinkable – even with the droughts we experience. That water is still considered to be a privilege and not a right for some Aboriginal communities speaks volumes about how little this country has progressed when it comes to addressing Indigenous disadvantage.
Email
olddogthoughts 