Stop them stealing the community's resources

The feds want control of our water resources and they want it bad. This material has been generated by John Howard's ABC in the last couple of days. Please read the list and then the reposted article below. Stop them stealing the community's resources. It belongs to the community and it's the taxpayers 10 Billion not John Howard's.

Turnbull warns Labor against playing politics with water

The federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, says it would be a tragedy for Australia if Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and the state governments played politics with the nation's water systems.

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Leaders urge Bracks to accept Murray-Darling plan

Only one state stands in the way of the Federal Government's plan to take control of the Murray-Darling Basin, with Victorian Premier Steve Bracks remaining opposed to the proposal.

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Rudd urges Bracks to compromise on water

Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd has asked the Victorian Government to reconsider its opposition to the Commonwealth's plan to take control of the Murray-Darling Basin.

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Iemma sticks to PM's Murray-Darling plan

New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma says the Victorian Premier is entitled to suggest an alternative plan to the Commonwealth's Murray-Darling proposal, but he is still backing the Prime Minister.

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Murray-Darling deal still likely, Rann says

South Australian Premier Mike Rann says he is still confident that an agreement can be reached for the Federal Government to take over the management of the Murray-Darling river system.

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PM 'happy' to consider Beattie's water plan

The Prime Minister says he will consider a proposal to divert water from Queensland into the Murray-Darling river system.

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PM's Murray-Darling objectives unclear: Rudd

Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says Prime Minister John Howard's objectives for the Federal Government to take control and manage the Murray-Darling river system remains unclear.

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Task force to examine Beattie's water proposal

Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the Queensland Premier's proposal to divert water from Queensland's north into the Murray-Darling system will be examined by a special task force.

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'Water war' fears over resurrected Bradfield scheme

A proposal from the Queensland Government to resurrect a 70-year-old water scheme to fix the Murray-Darling river system has drawn a mixed reaction, with one mayor predicting it will lead to a 'civil war' on water.

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Beattie resurrects plan to divert northern rivers

The Queensland Government has resurrected the 70-year-old Bradfield water plan, challenging the Commonwealth to "think outside the box" to fix the Murray-Darling river system.

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Rudd pushes for water compromise

Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says he will try to help premiers find a unified response to Prime Minister John Howard's $10 billion plan for water security in the Murray-Darling basin.

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No more money for Murray-Darling, warns Costello

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has ruled out offering the states any more money to sign up to the Commonwealth's stalled $10 billion water plan to take control of the Murray-Darling basin.

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SA irrigators angry over water talks snub

The peak body representing South Australian irrigators has been left out of talks with the Federal Government over its plan to take control of the Murray-Darling Basin.

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Slaking profit's thirst
by Maude Barlow

As water becomes rarer, it is being treated as a costly commodity by governments.

Late last year, I had the great privilege of giving a presentation at the International Landcare Conference on the global water crisis. What I observed as well as what I have researched about Australia's water crisis disturbed me deeply and led me to write these words of warning.

With a few exceptions, your politicians are not dealing honestly with you about the water crisis looming on your horizon. The use of the word "drought" leads people to believe that this is a cyclical situation and will end. That is not my reading. Annual rainfall is declining; salinity and desertification are spreading rapidly; rivers are being drained at an unsustainable rate; aquifers are way over-pumped - groundwater extraction skyrocketed a whopping 90 per cent in the 1990s - as well as being contaminated from the 80,000 toxic dump sites under the major cities; and many surface management areas now exceed sustainable limits. Ask any farmer: Australia is running out of water.

Yet, at the very moment that massive conservation plans must be implemented and the need for public oversight of diminishing water supplies has never been greater, your governments are promoting or planning at least six ways in which your water is being wasted, exported and privatised for corporate profit.

First, obsessed with the ideology of unlimited growth, politicians refuse to question the massive export of "virtual" water from water-intensive agricultural industries such as beef (almost two-thirds of which is exported), dairy and cotton. It is simply unsustainable for the driest continent on earth to be a net exporter of virtual water - about 4000 million megalitres a year - when this water is so desperately needed at home. Not surprisingly, these water exports benefit the big agribusiness companies while bleeding water (and livelihoods) from smaller farmers growing for the domestic market.

Instead of rethinking this dangerous and short-sighted policy, your Federal Government is negotiating a free trade agreement with China which, by the way, has destroyed its own water resources in its drive for economic dominance.

Second, the big European water companies are running water and wastewater systems in many of your cities, making huge profits from your scarce water resources. Residents of Sydney and Adelaide don't need to be reminded of the problems they have experienced with Thames Water, Vivendi and Suez, but you need to know that these companies have provoked a huge reaction all over the world for their outrageous water rates, poor service and environmental transgressions. At the fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City last March, the United Nations documented the global failure of water privatisation and called on governments to provide water for their citizens as a public service, not for profit.

Third, your governments are busy handing out massive bottled water licences to companies big and small for a pittance so they can put your precious water in plastic bottles and sell it back to you at exorbitant rates, all for shareholder profits. (Why would anyone choose bottled water over Melbourne's beautiful tap water if given a choice?) There are hundreds of domestic water brands in Australia with annual domestic sales of around 600 million litres. Moreover, your precious water is now also being exported in designer bottles to the rich in other countries. A recent example is the new Coca-Cola bottling facility outside Melbourne. This is terrible public policy.

Fourth, your governments have set the stage for massive water trading, brokered by private middle operators, between cash-starved farmers and growing urban populations. The idea is to use each drop of water in the most profitable way. (For the record, this is what China did and is now experiencing a huge grain shortage, as its water was diverted to industry.) Separating water from land is a recipe for ecological disaster. The rivers and aquifers need more water, not less. And just which farmers will be encouraged by the banks to sell water instead of growing food? The small farmers producing for the domestic market, that's who. Big agribusiness exporters will still get all the water they need as long as it lasts.

Fifth, your governments are turning to big high-tech, corporate-run "solutions" to the water crisis such as desalination, perhaps powered by nuclear energy. Desalination plants are ugly, dirty, intrusive, expensive, polluting and noisy. They create greenhouse gases and release a poisonous chemical brine back into the ocean. Desalination plants are the hallmark of failure; they are what you do when you have run out of other options. As bad as things are in Australia, you have not run out of options.

Finally, there are plans afoot to move bulk water by tanker from Tasmania to the thirsty cities of the coast, operated of course, by private companies for profit. There are myriad problems, ecologically and economically, with massive bulk water transfers. By and large, nature put water where it is intended to be; mass movement of water must be carefully thought through and the decision for such a serious undertaking should never be left to those who would stand to profit from it.

There is a historic and profound shift taking place in water policy in Australia just at the time it is becoming clear that you have a severe water problem. Until recently, your water was considered a common heritage and your governments had the constitutional responsibility to manage it in your collective name. Now, your governments have decided that water is a commodity, like running shoes, and has set out to sell it to those with the deepest pockets.

This is a tragedy.

International water conservation campaigner Maude Barlow was a key speaker at last year's Landcare conference in Melbourne.

Note Dick Cheney's "former employers" Halliburton are through front Company Kellogg Brown & Root profiting from privatised water in South Australia, Haliburton funded the Ghan Train to Darwin from Alice Spring and as well as uranium will profit from the new stooge Malcolm Turnbull and co's push to move agriculture to Northern Australia and to make profit from the pipe enclosure of water systems off the Murray-Murumbidgee....
Meanwhile buy shares in Insurance Companies as they profit from Climate Change insecurity - your fear is their profit !

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Water Crisis, Water Privatisation and John Howard
by Joseph Toscano (repost)

John Howard's $10 billion 10-year plan to "save" the Murray / Darling basin and "secure" Australia's water supply, has received the tick of approval from the mass media and Her Majesty's local Opposition, although many farmers are having second thoughts about the plan. Business as usual scream the headlines, we are told 70% of water will still be used for irrigation purpose. Australia's rice and cotton growers (most large corporations) will be able to continue to pursue their plans courtesy of the taxpayer.

I have no intention of privatising water, John Howard reassures the public. The fourth estate takes the word of a man who said he would never ever introduce a G.S.T. at face value, not even going through the motions of questioning a statement riddled with inconsistencies and qualifications. The neo conservative Murdoch Press, orgasmic at the prospect water will finally be privatised. The constitutional barriers to privatisation are no longer an issue. The leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition Kevin Rudd, tries to prod the Labor States to give up their traditional rights over water to the Federal government.

The money men and women are getting ready to participate in the fire sale (pardon the pun) of the country's water supplies. Nothing, not even an apathetic public, stands in their way. They are now preparing to gourge themselves on the free breakfast, lunch and dinner water privatisation will deliver. Never, never a G.S.T. - never, never water privatisation.

Water - the last frontier in the brave new world of the neo conservative wet dream. Communities held hostage by cartels that buy and sell water to the highest bidder. No wonder smaller farmers are concerned; they can see the writing on the wall. They know they could never survive if they found themselves at the beck and call of the money gurus. They are worried because of the PM's assurances that he will not privatise the country's water supplies, because they know John Howard's word is worthless.

It is a pity the fourth estate and many Australians are still gullible enough to believe the word of a man who has made an art form of lying.

LETS GET IT RIGHT

The Howard government's ambitious 10-year plan to secure Australia's water supply in a period of global warming, faces two major obstacles. It relies on the States voluntarily handing over their constitutional rights over the Murray/Darling Basin to the Federal government, and it needs to overcome many Australians suspicions that the move is an attempt by the Howard led government to privatise Australia's most precious commodity - water.

The Coalition government has the power to overcome both these objections at the next Federal election. Its majority in both Houses of Federal Parliament makes it relatively easy for the government to call a referendum on the question of ownership of water. The referendum could be held at the same time the next Federal election is held, at the end of the year.

The Australian people should be given the opportunity in a referendum to decide if they want the ownership of the country's water supplies incorporated into the Australian Constitution. If the referendum is successful, it would transfer the ownership of Australia's water resources from the States into the hands of the people. More importantly, it would overcome Australians suspicions that the Howard government's current plans to secure Australia's future water needs would result in the privatisation of water.

If the ownership of the country's water resources is incorporated in the Australian Constitution, the government of the day would not, as we saw in the case of the Commonwealth Bank, QANTAS, Telstra and Australia's airports, be able to privatise water supplies without first holding a referendum to determine if the owners of water - the Australian people - wanted to sell the country's rivers, tributaries and lakes.

 http://perth.indymedia.org/index.php?action=newswire&parentview=45335

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Confront The Doctrines And Practices Of Economic Scarcity

Then the penny drops, literally. The earthlings are selling water, they are treating it as a commodity. For the sellers of water this means that the scarcer fresh water is the higher the price and the greater the profit. There is still CAPITALISM on Earth; a system that became redundant in most galaxies aeons ago. No wonder water is scarce here.

 http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112562.php

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