Prime Minister John Howard's January 25 announcement of plans to deal with the water crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin contains some measures that are small steps in the right direction, such as the replacement of open irrigation channels with covered pipes to reduce evaporation.
However, other measures, such as the creation of a task force to "investigate" the expansion of irrigation-based agriculture in northern Australia foreshadows larger steps in the wrong direction. Furthermore, behind the plan lurks the spectre of increased privatisation of water resources.
The four Murray-Darling Basin state Labor governments — NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland — have offered cautious approval of the plan. Victorian Premier Steve Bracks has said his support for the plan would be conditional on the Murray-Darling Basin system not being placed in private hands in the future.
Mainstream media discussion of the plan has centred on the proposed ceding of control of the Murray-Darling Basin from the states to the federal government.
Viewed abstractly there is a case for the national administration of a river system that flows through four states. But given the track record of the Howard government, Bracks' concerns about privatisation — and those of the South Australian government over Canberra being beholden to the water-guzzling cotton and rice growing industries — should be taken seriously.
On the other hand, the state Labor governments' own records do not inspire confidence. As recently as January 16, the Victorian government announced the diversion to irrigation-based agriculture of water reserved for environmental flows in the Goulburn River and Broken Creek, a move condemned by Environment Victoria and the Australian Conservation Foundation.
While politicians debate federal-state relations and demand that working-class Australians reduce their household water consumption, a far more fundamental re-evaluation of water use in this country is required.
Two realities urgently need to be recognised. Firstly, the current decline in rainfall across southern Australia is a product of global warming and therefore is permanent, not cyclical. There is no point in waiting for rains that will never arrive.
Secondly, a major part of the water crisis is the over-draining of rivers and underground aquifers, despite a decrease in per capita household water usage.
So while Howard's exhortations to Australians to take shorter showers and install rainwater tanks have some merit (the latter would have a lot more merit if the government demonstrated its sincerity by installing the tanks free of charge), reducing household water use will not address the crisis. So what will?
Writing in the January 13 Melbourne Age, Canadian conservationist Maude Barlow outlines a number of ways in which direct or indirect privatisation of water causes the crisis. The privatisation of utilities is one. In Sydney and Adelaide, water-supply utilities have been sold to companies with a global track record of social and environmental destruction.
Another form of water privatisation is selling it cheaply to beverage companies to put in bottles and sell back to consumers at vastly inflated prices. The November 4 Age revealed that Melbourne bottled water producer Sunkoshi Ltd was paying $2.40 per megalitre for groundwater in contrast to the $960 per megalitre charged to household consumers.
But perhaps the most glaring case of government policy exacerbating the water crisis can be seen in irrigation-based agriculture being prioritised over environmental flow.
While Howard's plan for the Murray-Darling Basin involves some buying back of irrigation entitlements, a radical change in agricultural practice is needed. The major users of water are export-oriented agribusinesses producing beef, cotton and rice. Whether these industries should exist at all in Australia needs to be questioned.
Export agribusiness, paradoxically, fuels world hunger by bankrupting Third World farmers. Asian rice growers are unable to compete with Australian rice, which is effectively subsidised by the give-away pricing of Australia's dwindling water resources. Meanwhile, smaller farmers, cash-starved due to the drought, are encouraged to sell their remaining water resources to water-guzzling urban industries. This process, called water-trading, is mysteriously touted as a solution to the crisis.
Serious changes in agriculture and industry are becoming a matter of urgency. As a very first step, industrial and agricultural enterprises need to reveal their water usage, something they are currently not required to do. Then society needs to seriously question what water use should be permitted. It is small wonder that many people are hostile to household water-use restrictions when agribusiness and industry are permitted to squander water with impunity.
Furthermore, the water question cannot be separated from climate change caused by carbon emissions. "Market forces" (corporations' drive to maximise profit) are responsible for excessive carbon emissions as much as they are for water wastage. Yet, both in Australia and globally, market mechanisms are touted as the solution to the climate and water supply crises.