The Network: Water trading

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Saturday, 9 October 2010

Murray-Darling Basin Plan must not become a political football

MEDIA RELEASE
8th October 2010

National public water rights and environmental advocacy group Fair Water Use is encouraged by the broad recommendations made in the guide to the draft Basin Plan released earlier today by the Murray Darling Basin Authority, but is concerned that Federal and State parliamentarians will use the forthcoming consultation period to justify softening of the Plan for short term electoral advantage, rather than to promote the long term interests of the river system and its communities.

The group’s national coordinator, Ian Douglas, commented this afternoon, “The progressive degradation of the Murray-Darling cannot be resolved without significant impact upon those who were previously encouraged by successive governments to overexploit the waters of the nation’s most vital rivers.”

Fair Water Use believes that Australian governments must shoulder much of the blame for the crisis, as a result of a raft of inept policies, including the hyper-allocation of Murray-Darling water, the COAG decision of 1994 to develop a national “water industry” and the promotion of agribusiness-based managed investment schemes.

“Basin communities have themselves been exploited by Federal and State administrations and the pro-market lobby and have every right to feel aggrieved”, Dr Douglas added.

A politically fudged and compromised Basin Plan will be no friend to those who seek to make responsible use of Murray-Darling water. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority must be allowed to develop its Basin Plan free from pressure from those who fail to grasp, or choose to ignore, the profound, long term, economic, social and environmental implications of a degraded Murray-Darling river system.

“Governments must now devise concerted regional development initiatives, to enable Basin communities to transition to a sustainable future”, Dr Douglas concluded.

Related reading from Miss Eagle's files

Ian Douglas mentions above the 1994 decision by COAG

For more information -

which is vital to an understanding of the current state of play -

please read the following:

Hilmer Report - National Competition Policy

Council of Australian Governments Communique - 25 February 1994

COAG and Water Privatization

Unbundling Australia's utility regulation - Labson

Friday, 8 October 2010

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is out and on-line

Click to enlarge

Currently, on ABC TV and on ABC News 24 the Press Conference releasing the plan is being held.
To get the low-down on the hoe-down which is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan a new website has been established. For all things to do with the Plan, please go here.

Please be in touch with this, Networkers.

I want to know what you reckon.

Biggest water cuts expected in the Murrumbidge Irrigation Area and the Goulburn-Broken Rivers area
Miss Eagle has been saying that this is the biggest structural adjustment since white settlement. The MDBA say that this sort of organisation of a massive river basin has never been done ANYWHERE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. This is a world first, Australia! Imagine!
Barnaby Joyce has spoken at a Press Conference yet could not comment on The Guide's detail. He is now speaking again just to give free kicks to Penny Wong. I would remind Networkers that John Howard tasked former National Party Leader John Anderson with the task of sorting out the mess that has been the over-allocation of water in the Murray-Darling Basin. Anderson spent about two years on this and couldn't sort it. Agricultural politics is an agressive, self-interested and nasty business! The Nats don't deserve any air time to complain. Let them learn to be constructive, instead of destructive. Get on with doing a proper job, Barnaby.

Further reading:

Membership of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority
Interview with John Anderson , 25 August 2003
Irrigators unhappy with groundwater program
Cubbie Station in South Queensland, Australia's major interstate water diversion issue
The Great Water Plan by John Quiggin
Farmers' water reform fears
Basin plan trade-off would cut 800 jobs
Basin plan presents once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

Make yourself a stakeholder in the stakeholder engagement strategy for the Murray Darling Basin Plan development process

The Guide to the Proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan

is being released this afternoon.

Are you a Stakeholder?

You may not consider yourself a stakeholder,

but you can be if you want to be.

Please go to this page to read all about the

Stakeholder Engagement Plan

of the

Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

The stakeholder list is extensive

Here is a list (but not the whole list) of the people the MDBA considers part of their stakeholder engagement process:

Our stakeholders are groups or individuals who have an interest in the development and implementation of the Basin Plan and the activities of MDBA.

In preparing the stakeholder engagement strategy, we identified over 1000 stakeholder groups who can be broadly grouped as follows:

· people living in the Basin and the broader Australian community

· industry, conservation, recreation and community groups

· local governments

· Indigenous peoples

· Basin Community Committee

· Basin Officials Committee

· state government agencies and departments — scientific, technical and policy

· Commonwealth Government agencies and departments — scientific, technical and policy

science and research communities

So, you can see Networkers, it is all up to you. You can include yourself through sheer interest – and interest can be wide or specific.

I suggest that you consider your interest. Please ensure you read the previous post – and get yourself to one of the MDBA roadshow events somewhere in the four-state-and-one-territory-wide Basin. There is an event coming to somewhere near you.

This is the biggest structural adjustment in Australia since white settlers first arrived and we began to fight the First Nations for control of their land. We are about to see farmers and people living in rural and regional Australia put up a fight for control of their livelihoods, their communities, and what they consider as their land and their water.

This structural adjustment will be so widespread in breadth and depth that few of us will be left unaffected … right down to food availability, food security, food pricing and food quality. So you may not be a grower. You may not live in a rural or regional town or city. But sure as God made little green apples you are a consumer!

So there is the involvement of your very own individual self-interest. But let us all, Networkers, reach beyond that to listen to the people in the Murray-Darling Basin who are most affected by any future decisions. We may not always agree with them. We might find their priorities are not our priorities. However, we owe these people our greatest attention and respect in what they about to go through. For so many of them will find themselves in the Valley of Decision. That is not a pretty place to be…and some will suffer from the strain.

Further reading:

Regional communities can build resilient futures with less water
(download document in box above)
Murray Darling cuts 'could spark riots
Irrigators warn water cuts will devastate communities

Monday, 14 June 2010

Water privatisation : The Australian story : selling a birthright for a mess of pottage

Wondering what Ian McNeice is doing in a wig
in a post on water privatisation?
Please go here for your amusement.
It was posted here.
Scroll down to find out the source and the reason.
~~~

If Networkers want to get a grasp on Australia's water history then, alongside keeping up with the broad range of current issues, there is a need to develop a firm basis in history. I discovered this for myself when I discovered the wonderful Joe Powell. I live in Victoria and discovered Watering the Garden State: Water, Land and Community in Victoria 1834-1988. Now it is about the Victorian story but this story has great impact on Australia's national water story because of the involvement of Alfred Deakin and because of the Murray Darling Basin and its development.

Having said that and taken Networkers way back in the settler history of Australia, let us go back to the dark ages of 1994. This was when Paul Keating of living memory was Prime Minister. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) was a mere two years old.

While we of the lower orders who are not closely involved in decision-making for the nation were sound asleep, COAG met and made some decisions. The COAG decisions on water were far reaching and, if any of us of the lower orders noticed, we (moi included) probably nodded in agreement and went about our business. Let's revisit what they said in their official communique of 25 February, 1994.

Water Resource Policy

The Council considered a report from the Working Group on Water Resource Policy, chaired by Sir Eric Neal, outlining a strategic framework for the efficient and sustainable reform of the Australian water industry. The report had been commissioned by the Council at its June 1993 meeting.

The report noted that, while progress is being made on a number of fronts to reform the water industry and to minimise unsustainable natural resource use, there currently exists within the water industry:

approaches to charging that often result in commercial and industrial users of water services, in particular, paying more than the costs of service provision;
major asset refurbishment needs in rural areas for which, in general, adequate financial provision has not been made;
impediments to irrigation water being transferred from low value broad-acre agriculture to higher value uses in horticulture, crop production and dairying;
service delivery inefficiencies; and
a lack of clear definition concerning the role and responsibilities of a number of institutions involved in the industry.

The report also noted that there is a number of issues and deficiencies involving water and the wider natural resource base that require the attention of governments. These include widespread natural resource degradation which has an impact on the quality and/or quantity of the nation’s water resources.

The Council endorsed the strategic framework proposed by the Working Group and agreed to its implementation. Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania agreed to the broad principles but had concerns on the detail of the recommendations. The framework embraces pricing reform based on the principles of consumption-based pricing and full-cost recovery, the reduction or elimination of cross-subsidies and making subsidies transparent. The framework also involves the clarification of property rights, the allocation of water to the environment, the adoption of trading arrangements in water, institutional reform and public consultation and participation.

Implementation of the strategic framework is expected to result in a restructuring of water tariffs and reduced or eliminated cross-subsidies for metropolitan and town water services with the impact on domestic consumers of water services being offset by cost reductions achieved by more efficient, customer-driven, service provision.

In the case of rural water services, the framework is intended to generate the financial resources to maintain supply systems should users desire this and through a system of tradeable entitlements to allow water to flow to higher value uses subject to social, physical and environmental constraints. Where they have not already done so, States are to give priority to formally determining allocations or entitlements to water, including allocations for the environment.

Environmental requirements are to be determined on the best scientific information available and will have regard to the inter-temporal and interspatial water needs required to maintain the health and viability of river systems and groundwater basins. The Council also agreed where significant future irrigation activity or dam construction is contemplated, that in addition to economic evaluations, assessments will be undertaken to ensure that the environmental requirements of river systems can be adequately met.

Because the changes flowing from the framework are extensive and far reaching in their implications, the Council considered that a five to seven year implementation period will be required. Part of this process will involve governments consulting the community on aspects of the framework. The speed and extent of water industry reform and the adjustment process will be dependent on the availability of financial resources to facilitate structural adjustment and asset refurbishment. The detailed decisions of the Council in relation to water resource policy are at Attachment A.

The Council has asked the Working Group on Water Resource Policy to prepare a report for its first meeting in 1995 on progress in implementing the framework with further reports to be prepared annually on progress over the succeeding four years.

Networkers, we might not have known what COAG was up to - but it did. It had the blessing of the ACCC. The intention was - and it was carried out and has its impact on us all and on the land and environment of this nation up to this very day - to:

Unbundle land and water
Commodify water - made possible by the separation of land and water
Trade in water - once the water is unbundled from land; packaged in neat entitlements; then the stock exchange that is the water trading market can be opened for business and plunder.

I cannot prove that there was aforethought that the major international privateers such as Suez and Veolia would enter the fray in Australia - but I reckon, if COAG had not deliberately planned for this, there was a fair idea that it would happen.

The rest is history.

I think there is a question or questions we need to ask our politicians (of all political persuasions) of then up until now.

Did you foresee Australia's current water crisis developing/.occurring?
If not, why not? Too busy, disinterested, couldn't be bothered?
If so, why did you set the ground work for the vultures (i.e. Suez, Veolia, et al) to benefit and profiteer from our dried and drying bones and take our heritage from us.