MEDIA RELEASE

One wonders how many Australians are aware of the significance of USFTA, an acronym that is being used with ever-increasing frequency in the course of “in-house” discussions on the future of Australia’s vital and vulnerable water resources.

Whilst the public continues to be fed the usual government spin that the current crisis affecting the Murray-Darling is all about drought (conveniently ignoring the fact that much of the Darling catchment has received average to well above average rainfall in recent years), it is clear that, behind the façade of avuncular concern, the main game is taking place in the back-rooms of our elected representatives and the board-rooms of corporate water-mongers, predominantly overseas players. The name of the game is privatisation, the currency is Australian water and the trump card is the US Free Trade Agreement.

In essence, the USFTA defines that US investors (in this instance, water speculators and insatiable water guzzlers such as Coca-Cola, whose social and environmental credentials continue to dismay many international observers) must have unfettered access to Australian markets, including privatised water.

As long as our water remained in public ownership, the threat posed by the USFTA was limited. However, successive governments have leapt gleefully into bed at the top end of town, passionately insisting that protectionist barriers are antediluvian (pun intended), and that as a nation we must succumb to the relentless assault of foreign capital. Sadly, it appears that in the corridors of political power, the nurturing of the open market is taking precedence over Australia’s water security.

The privatisation lobby and its paymasters have been making a great deal more than hay while the sun has been shining over the Murray-Darling Basin (Minister Wong, please do not confuse the situation with your continuing reference to the “Southern Basin”: the connectivity of Murray-Darling water is absolute and cannot be bisected for the sake of political expediency); their activities being effectively smoke-screened by the continuing failure of the Federal Government to mandate a national water register: a clear book of accounts logging ownership of the nation’s water resources.  

Minister Wong is on the record as stating this week that “if there were evidence of widespread speculation in the water market that was driving up prices, restricting competition, then of course governments would need to look at that and the Federal Government would look at that”. At the risk of appearing naïve, Fair Water Use would like to ask the Minister for her definition of the terms “investment and “speculation” and whether she really feels that they are ever mutually-exclusive.

Throw off the sheets Minister Wong; step out into the streets and paddocks of this fine but seriously-stressed country and ask US – no Minister, not the USA – US, the electorate of Australia, to identify OUR priorities for OUR water future.

Ian Douglas, Coordinator

FWUA