Is Jacinta serious?

 

Written by: Mike W on 17 September 2023

You’ve got to hand it to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – she sure knows how to prettify colonialism and its aftermath.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Price, who is the Opposition’s shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs and one of two prominent Indigenous advocates for the reactionary No vote in the Voice Referendum, denied that colonialism had negatively impacted upon Australian First Peoples. 

Instead, she said that it had impacted positively. “Absolutely. I mean, now we’ve got running water, we’ve got readily available food.”

Food

But First Peoples always had “readily available food”, according to Geoffrey Blainey, a conservative historian. He said that famines were rare. “It may well be that on most days of 1788 the Aboriginals ate a much greater number of fresh fish than the 13 million Australians eat today,” he argued in his 1975 book Triumph of the Nomads (p. 133). After making similar comparisons based on waterbirds, shellfish, seeds and meat, he concluded, “If we specify the main ingredients of a good standard of living as food, health, shelter and warmth, the average aboriginal was probably as well off as the average European in 1800…” (p. 225).

What changed was the impact of colonialism which, by force and violence, or the threat of force and violence, separated First Peoples from their lands, and then destroyed the bountiful habitats that had sustained human life in favour of sheep and cattle runs that brought in feral grasses and destroyed the medicinal and food stores of the First Peoples. Changes that wiped out biological diversity included clearing land for grain crops. 

I have seen the terrible quality of the “readily available food” in canteens and stores on the APY Lands and throughout northern Australia, and I have seen the prices asked of people living on or below the poverty line. The quislings are wrong.

Water

First Peoples have had their water sources: soaks, water holes, creeks and rivers, and certain tree roots and ground-burrowing frogs, exchanged – violently – for the “benefits” of running water from taps.

I say violently, because farmers and pastoralists, and in more recent time, miners, have taken the pure waters of the land from their fellow human beings and given them over to the stock and the crops and the minerals whose value capitalism places above that of the welfare of people.

Waterholes were poisoned, the shit from stock fouled others, and First peoples were “dispersed” by guns and whips.

In 1856, John Bowyer Bull recorded how he had visited waterholes on Flinders Ranges stations. At Minbrie, Wilpena and Aroona, he reported seeing only women of the Adnyamathanha. They all said the same thing “Whitefella shootem all about blackfella”.

At Angepena Station, “Stewart took me down the creek…and showed me a camp of lubras and children all cut to pieces with the stockwhips. The women’s breasts were cut open and little children six to twelve months old were bleeding all over.” Bull was told that the women and children went to a little spring to get a drink when stockmen whipped them to keep them away from waters now reserved for cattle.

In 2011 I wrote a poem about this:

Angepena Waters

Angepena waters were always just there
For all of the yura to share
And the birds and the creatures 
Danced through its virgin features
As the yura chanted the songlines

Angepena waters are sparkling in the sun
But white men took the land for their cattle to run
And for them it makes more sense 
Than to build a big long fence
That the yura are dispersed with the gun

Though yura men lay dead
Their families had not fled
They still huddled near Angepena water
So the stockmen took whips
And slashed their breasts with great rips
And cut the heads and the backs of their children

At Angepena waters there were genocidal slaughters
So that cattle could drink without disturbance
With the water holes mud
Mixed with cow shit and blood
Angepena’s a shame job for whitey.

But the shame job continues today in First Peoples communities. 

Almost all of what city people call remote communities are reliant on bore water and, as a result, there are concerns that groundwater is being exposed to large amounts of minerals, particularly heavy metals. These are a major cause of kidney disease in First Peoples.

In some communities, uranium is the problem. Laramba is an Aboriginal community, roughly 205 kilometres west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), that is home to about 300 people. Its water comes from a bore, and uranium occurs naturally in the area. A 2020 NT Power and Water report found the community's water was contaminated with 0.052 milligrams per litre of uranium, more than three times the concentration limit recommended in the Australia's drinking water guidelines.

Salt and calcium are also present in bore water. Washing machines, taps, electric jugs become heavily calcified and require regular replacement. In addition to these ongoing costs, communities often have to purchase bottled water. 

Jacinta Price cannot plead ignorance about these things. Just last June, the community at Ali Curung, 400km north of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) started trucking in bottled water because issues with local water quality — including contamination, taste, colour or even temperature — are causing many residents to turn to the sugared poisons of soft drink instead.

Controversy surrounding the bottled water issue is well-known in the Territory following a decision by the government to grant a private water licence to Fortune Agribusiness at the nearby Singleton Station. 

The licence will allow Fortune to extract up to 40,000 megalitres a year for a major fruit and vegetable project in Central Australia that will mostly supply China.
Kaytetye Warlpiri woman Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe is one of the local mob who fear any drop in the water table could risk "irreversible damage" to sacred springs, soakages and trees.

"This is about people's lives, this is about human rights," she said. "The impact will be devastating, and we will hold the government responsible for the damage."

Nor should Jacinta Price be unaware of problems closer to Mparntwe. 

Her mother, Bess, was NT Community Services minister in August 2014 when water was cut off from the town camp of Ingerreke (Whitegate).

Because it is not an official camp, Whitegate residents, who live in tin sheds, do not get basic services, including electricity. The population fluctuates from a handful to up to 30 people, and they organised a rally against Bess Price in September 2014 to demand access to water.

As the daughter of a Warlpiri women, Jacinta surely knows the story of her own people’s denial of access to water by pastoralists. In her June 2023 Arena Quarterly article on the police killing of Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker, Melinda Hinkson wrote:

Such an attitude marks the character of a lot of what occurred across the Australian continent in the early brutal years of colonial invasion. It is a vital ingredient to the othering that enables one person to kill another, and that rationalises the dispossession and destruction of entire societies in the name of European progress. On Warlpiri Country this process acquired purposeful intent in the 1920s and was felt most profoundly with the granting of a pastoral lease over Pikilyi, a tract of land of great cultural significance which contains the only precious permanent water source throughout the vast Tanami Desert. Having secured the pastoral lease and named it Mt Doreen for his wife, William Braitling set about a brutal campaign to exclude Warlpiri from the life-giving spring and surrounding lush hunting grounds. Through their starvation he forced them to mine wolfram in return for meagre food supplies. There were documented cases of malnutrition, of floggings, of women and girls suffering venereal disease, of a group of Warlpiri being neck-chained and forced to walk the 250 miles to Alice Springs as part of investigations into the death of a white man. The work of missionaries and anthropologists to expose the brutal conditions on Mt Doreen station was one significant factor in the establishment of settlements and reserves across Central Australia in the 1940s and 1950s.

Why Jacinta Price wants to put lipstick on the pig of colonialism is beyond me.

She will not stop First Peoples fighting for their rights.

Beware of Vampires!

Vampires are on the loose, but it’s not our blood they’re after. It’s another fluid equally as precious. They are after our water, or more particularly, the profits they can make from Australia’s open and deregulated water market.

Vanguard previously discussed the Australian water market in an article Sold Down The River in October this year. Lately, a US registered company, Aqua Ceres has been seeking investors willing to put at least $500,000 each into Australian water entitlement purchases. They want to raise $193 million to buy about 25,000 megalitres of high-reliability water entitlement within two years. They are gambling on the expectation that climate change and increasing horticultural demand will drive water entitlement prices up, allowing them to make enormous profits.

 Aqua Ceres points out that “water is the most critical of earth’s natural resources”, and it’s “a natural hedge against climate change.” They state that “investing with Aqua Ceres enables investors to invest in water directly without direct exposure to many of the usual operational and production risks associated with farm ownership.”

 

The Aqua Ceres Australian Water Offshore Fund is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. They have set up what they call a “Cayman mini master structure”, which will allow both non-US and US tax-exempt investors to direct their funds through a Cayman Islands feeder fund. The whole thing is starting to smell like a dead Murray River carp!
 

To cap it off, one of the Australian directors of Aqua Ceres was a director of the Australian subsidiary of a US company which was in trouble with the NSW Government in 2015 over that company’s actions in ploughing Aboriginal burial mounds and clearing native vegetation on a property in western NSW.

 

Water users predict that the actions of Aqua Ceres could cause massive disruption in the water market and drive up the price of permanent high-security water to a point where it would be unsustainable for irrigators, including even the large-scale almond growers.

 

It is reported that other US companies are also looking to get into the Australian water market. They want to exploit looming supply-demand imbalance of Australian irrigation water. Small irrigators, farm workers, country people and all of us who are consumers are suffering due to foreign control of our water. We need to unite and drive a wooden stake through the hearts of the water vampires!  

Dirty Deal in the Top End

 Written by: Duncan B. on 4 December 2021

A dirty deal has been cooked up between the Northern Territory Government and a company called Fortune Agribusiness. This company owns Singleton Station, a 294,000 hectare farm 120 km south of Tennant Creek in the NT.

Fortune wants to develop 3500 hectares of this land for intensive irrigated horticulture, growing fruit, vegetables and other crops. 70% of the produce would be exported to Asia, particularly China.  The NT Government has awarded Fortune the biggest ground water extraction licence in NT history. The licence means that for 30 years, Fortune will be able to extract 40,000 megalitres of water per year for free from an ancient aquifer in the arid interior of the NT.

Traditional owners and environmentalists in the Northern Territory protested about the deal but were unable to stop the NT Government granting the water licence to Fortune. Traditional owners said that the water needed to stay for the animals, trees, bush tucker and bush medicine. Environmentalists fear the project will cause irreversible environmental damage.

The traditional owners and environmentalists forced the Government to hold a review of the Fortune development but surprise!, surprise!, the development has been approved subject to certain conditions.

Opponents of the Fortune development are continuing the fight. The Arid Lands Environment Centre is raising funds for a possible judicial review.

The NT Government changed the rules regarding water extraction which prohibited damage by new developments to groundwater-dependent ecosystems, after Fortune complained that the rule would prevent them from going ahead with their plans. After negotiations with Fortune the Environment Department changed the rules so that 30% environment damage to ecosystems was OK!

Fortune Agribusiness is an Australian investment company but it has links to Ostar, a Chinese-language media company, based in Melbourne. Ostar runs a network of radio stations and newspapers. 

It was founded by Jiang Zhaoquing, (also known as Tommy Jiang), who migrated to Australia in 1991. Unfortunately, Ostar recently went bankrupt and is in liquidation, owing $560 million to creditors, including $55 million to the Tax Office. The effect of Ostar’s bankruptcy on Fortune’s plans is unknown at present.

While there are deals like the Fortune deal still happening, total Chinese investment in Australia has declined significantly recently. In 2020, Chinese investment in Australia was $2.5 billion, compared with $3.4 billion the previous year. Agriculture receives about 4% of this investment. Chinese investment in Australia peaked at $17.5 billion in 2008, falling to $15 billion in 2016. Reflecting this fall in overall Chinese investment in Australia, Chinese investment in Australian agriculture is also falling. 

Chinese companies are selling some of their properties in Australia, including the troubled Van Dairies in Tasmania, which has sold off some of its farms to Australian companies.  A lot of Chinese investment is going to agricultural projects in South America and Africa.

The Australian Tree Nut Industry

 Written by: Duncan B. on 25 November 2021

The tree nut industry in Australia is big business. This year the farm gate value of the production of almonds, macadamias, pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans and chestnuts was almost $1.2 billion. This is forecast to rise to over $2 billion by 2030. $500 million of new investment has been poured into new nut plantings every year for the past five years.

Almonds are Australia’s most valuable horticultural export crop. In 2021, almond exports were worth $545 million. The two biggest growers of almonds in Australia are Singapore-based Olam and Australian-owned Select Harvests. Almond plantings in the lower Murray irrigation area total about 34,000 hectares, up by 7000 ha since 2018.

Macadamias are the second most important nut crop after almonds in Australia. Production currently worth $350 million is tipped to double by 2030. The big players are getting involved in macadamias as well. Australian-owned Rural Funds Management plans to invest $500 million over the next decade in macadamia plantings. Belgian Finasucre has bought 1000 ha of macadamia plantations for $59 million, and the Canadian Public Sector Pension Fund, PSP, is there of course. They own a macadamia cracking plant in Queensland, and are expanding their plantings of macadamias. 

A firm called Stahmann Webster, recently purchased by the Canadian Public Sector Pension Fund, dominates the production of walnuts and pecans in Australia, producing more than 85% of the national crop. 

It is not surprising that the big boys are into growing tree nuts. Gross revenue per hectare from tree nut crops ranges from $20,000 to $30,000.  The rate of return of $2000 to $3000 for every megalitre of water applied to nut trees is 10 to 20 times higher than the return from traditional horticultural crops such as tomatoes and other vegetables. These returns are also well above the returns from dairying on irrigated farms.

Almond trees are thirsty! 12.5 megalitres of water per hectare are required to grow almonds. This compares with 9.9-12.2 for rice, 9-10 for table grapes, 8-10 for citrus, 7 for cotton and 4 for olives. It is estimated that the horticulture industry in the Murray-Darling Basin, (much of it being nut plantations), will require 1.5 million megalitres of water from the river system within five years. Citrus and grape growers are expressing concerns about future water availability.

The high returns from crops like almonds allow the big horticulture companies to manipulate the water market to force the price of irrigation water in the Murray-Darling Basin to levels beyond the means of ordinary horticulturists and dairy farmers. These foreign and Australian-owned agribusiness giants make sure that they have plenty of water while many small irrigation farmers have been forced out of farming due to the high price of water.

Book review: WOUNDED COUNTRY

 Written by: Duncan B. on October 23 2021

WOUNDED COUNTRY. The Murray-Darling Basin A Contested History by Quentin Beresford (Newsouth Publications $35) is the third book about the Murray-Darling Basin to be published this year, following on from Dead in the Water and Sold Down the River. This is a good thing. There cannot be too much exposure of the destruction of a major section of Australia’s environment in the interests of mainly foreign-owned agribusiness operations, with the assistance of servile politicians, particularly from the National Party.

The author takes a broad historic view of the Basin, tracing its history from the explorations of Sturt and Mitchell, the dispossession and destruction of the Aboriginal inhabitants through small-pox and murder, to the spread of the squatters (and later the small selectors) who took over the Murray-Darling Basin area.

Beresford says that the Murray-Darling Basin has been over-exploited for 200 years. He describes the destruction of the native forest and grasses and the killing of millions of native animals and birds. He outlines the damage done to the soil by the introduction of sheep and destructive agricultural practices such as over-stocking and land clearing. The result was a reduction in rainfall, an increase in salinity, wide-spread soil erosion and the massive dust storms that engulfed the countryside and reached the capital cities.

When we read Beresford’s review of the history of the Murray-Darling Basin, we see that nothing has changed since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Then as now, inept and corrupt politicians have served the vested interests that profit from the over-development of the Basin.

Beresford reserves special fire for the National Party. The National Party and its predecessor, the Country Party, have always opposed measures to control water use, stop soil erosion and prevent excessive land clearing. They are creatures of the big irrigators of northern New South Wales and Queensland, the water barons and foreign-owned agribusiness. They have done everything in their power to sabotage the Murray-Darling Basin Plan since its inception, in the interests of the parasites. 

The losers in this whole sad saga are the small irrigators who are forced to pay high prices for water while big irrigators have plenty of water for their cotton and almonds. Many small irrigators have left farming, with the towns suffering as a result.

Also losers are the First Peoples, the indigenous inhabitants of the region.  Before colonisation they lived in harmony with the land and the rivers for thousands of years. They fished and collected mussels from the rivers and lived and hunted on their banks. Today they are marginalised, with little access to land and water rights. The “experts” ignore the valuable knowledge and experience that the First Peoples can bring to managing the Murray-Darling Basin.

Read this book and be angry. Be angry at the exploiters who are destroying our environment. Be angry at their politician servants. Channel your anger into the struggle for National Independence and Socialism in Australia.

Sold Down the River!

Written by: Duncan B. on 2 October 2021

Sold Down the River. How Robber Barons and Wall Street Traders Cornered Australia’s Water Market by Scott Hamilton and Stuart Kells, (Text Publishing 2021, $35), is a book that everyone interested in the sad story of the Murray-Darling Basin should read.

The authors tell how Australia’s most precious resource was handed over to speculators at the expense of farmers, the other inhabitants of irrigation areas, Indigenous people and the environment. 

From the earliest days in the late nineteenth century when irrigation schemes were established, water was publicly owned and controlled and water rights were always linked to land ownership. In the early nineteen nineties, under the influence of the Friedman economics of the “free market” which brought on a mania for “competition” and privatisation in Australia, water rights were separated from land ownership and water rights became something that could be traded or sold. 

In 2004 the “National Water Initiative” made water markets the primary tool of water management. Water became just like any other commodity. It became a financial asset. Compared to sectors of the economy such as banking and finance there was very little regulation of the players in the water market - the traders and brokers who set about making enormous profits from trading water. There was no requirement for water traders to have any connection to farming.

Farmers who often struggle with poor mobile phone and internet connections found themselves in competition for water with water traders who use supercomputers and “bots” to trade water in seconds.

Many of the traders are US based banks and hedge funds. The authors detail how these parasites manipulate the water market, benefit from periods of water shortage and create artificial shortages. They milk high profits from farmers desperate to obtain water to start or finish off their crops. 

The water traders ally themselves with the mega-farms run by organisations such as the Canadian pension funds. They ensure that there is adequate water for the huge plantations of almond, olives etc, while depriving productive farmers of much-needed water.

The authors call for a new model of governance for water where “we would decide as a society how best to allocate scarce water in a way that balanced all the imperatives such as efficient agriculture, river health, and recognising the cultural and economic rights of Indigenous people.”

Given the vested interests involved in the water market and the billions of dollars in profits they are making, the chances of this happening are remote.

Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into the Register of Foreign-Owned Water Entitlements

 

Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

Preamble

In responding to the invitation to the public to offer submissions to the Productivity Commission’s Inquiry into the Register of Foreign-Owned Water Entitlements, the CPA (M-L) acknowledges that the following matters are outside the scope of the inquiry:

1.     Whether or not there should have been the commodification of water that led to the existence of a market in tradeable water entitlements;

2.     Whether or not that market should have been opened to non-consumptive speculators in general, and foreign entities in particular.

To ensure that our submission to this inquiry can not be interpreted as an acceptance of the water market and of foreign investment in it, we emphatically state:

1.     Our Party is totally opposed to the commodification of water that led to the existence of a market in tradeable water entitlements;

2.     Our Party is totally opposed to the opening of that market to non-consumptive speculators in general, and foreign entities in particular.

Response to inquiry

The Treasurer has established the following three points as the scope of the inquiry.

To:

·       assess whether the information provided in the Report delivers on the policy objectives of the scheme of increasing transparency of foreign ownership of water entitlements;

·       identify the direct and indirect costs and benefits associated with maintaining the Register and producing the Report; and

·       identify the direct and indirect costs borne by foreign owners of water entitlements to ensure compliance with the Act.

 

Point 1

The Register fails to increase transparency of foreign ownership of water entitlements in several significant ways:

1.     Access to information in the Water Register is currently restricted to certain Commonwealth Government Ministers and their departments. There are proposals for access to be extended to officers in other jurisdictions and other countries. However, one of the purposes of the Register is to promote more informed public debate. This requires all information in the Register to be accessible to Australian researchers and the Australian public. The scope of the Report should be enlarged to reflect this.

2.     The Australian Tax Office (ATO) which manages the Register defines “foreign persons” for the purposes of the Register according to three criteria. One relates to the per centage of interest in an entitlement of a foreign corporation or foreign government. This is set at 20 per cent or more. This differs from the ATO’s standard of 10 per cent used to compile foreign direct investment statistics.  Any foreign water entitlement holder with less than 20 per cent investment in an entitlement is not captured in the data. This is not conducive to greater transparency and must be changed.

3.     The confidentiality provisions of the ATO in respect of its data prevent the identification of individual investors. This is also contrary to informed public debate, particularly in respect of a foreign investor’s social license to operate here with the consent of the Australian community.  For example, the largest known foreign water entitlement holder is the Canadian Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP). Towards the end of last year, it became one of the top shareholders of the controversial US security contractor, Palantir Technologies, after its recent IPO. PSP’s massive purchase of water entitlements for the growing of almonds (for export in the main), is controversial in its own right, and that controversy is now compounded by its investment in Palantir. PSP is known because of media interest in its purchase of water entitlements, but who are the other foreign owners, and what is their track record in terms of social and environmental responsibility? Australians need to be able to access this information.

Point 2

We have no comment on this point beyond stating that the direct and indirect costs associated with maintaining the Register and producing the Report must not be used to restrict the information that foreign water entitlement holders are required to provide to the ATO, nor must they be used to restrict the information on foreign water entitlement holders that can be accessed by the Australian public.

Point 3

Not only must all direct and indirect costs be borne by foreign owners of water entitlements to ensure compliance with the Act, but there must be an immediate change to their exemption from paying capital gains tax on the profits they make out of those entitlements. According to the ATO:

“Water entitlements are generally separate from the underlying land and not taxable Australian real property. This means that a foreign resident would disregard any capital gain from the sale of a water entitlement. In contrast, Australian resident entities are required to account for gains or losses on their worldwide assets, which includes assets in Australia like water entitlements.”

It is simply unacceptable that Australian farmers must compete with giant multinational corporations who are given tax breaks that cannot be enjoyed by Australians.

It is hard to see why the Treasurer’s inquiry should focus on the costs to foreign investors of compliance to a Register administered by the Treasurer’s own ATO, when that ATO is exempting foreign holders of water entitlements from capital gains tax on profits from trade in those entitlements.

 

Nick G.

Chairperson

Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

March 6, 2021

www.cpaml.org

info@cpal.org

 

Foreign Control of Australia’s Water

Written by: Duncan B. on 8 March 2021

Water is a precious commodity. Life can’t exist without water. In Australia water is something we don’t have a great deal of, so Australians will be disturbed to learn that over 10% of Australia’s water  entitlements are foreign owned, that is 4299 gigalitres out of a total of 39,383 gigalitres.

The national register of foreign water ownership released recently shows that corporations and individuals from Canada with 698GL, China with 662GL and the US with 660Gl are the main foreign owners of Australian water.

Queensland had the highest proportion of foreign ownership of water at 18.8%. Just over half the foreign-owned water is held in the Murray-Darling Basin, equal to 2234GL or 11.3% of the food bowl’s entitlements. (The figures probably understate the degree of foreign ownership of water and don’t discriminate between the different types of entitlement held by foreigners.)

The Canadian investment fund PSP Investments is a major player in investments in Australian agriculture. It is believed to own 2% of the Murray-Darling Basin water entitlements, using the water to grow walnuts, almonds, cotton and cereal crops.

Our water is too precious to be the plaything of foreign owners and speculators. Regaining control of our natural resources is an important part of securing Australia’s national independence.

Book Review: Dead in the Water

 

Written by: Nick G. on 25 February 2021

Richard Beasley’s new book’s cover describes it as a “very angry book” about the death of the Murray-Darling Basin.

In fact Beasley, who was Senior Council assisting the SA government’s 2018 Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, prefers to say that he was not angry, but livid, when writing the book. I suspect “livid” is defined by the mathematical formula “livid = (fury x anger)²” if his scathing denunciations of fraud, incompetence and unlawfulness are anything to go by. 

The book is a compelling read and explains in great clarity why the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is unlawful and why this is responsible for our greatest environmental catastrophe.

 

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is charged with implementing the law contained within the Water Act (2007) passed by the Australian parliament during the last term of the Howard Government. 

 

The Water Act was Howard’s response to the Millenium Drought and sought to overcome the Constitutional prohibition on the national government having any responsibility for the nation’s waters. Beasley praises him for this, adding that “…this book is not an analysis of what he can be blamed for. I have a strict word limit.” 

 

What Howard hoped to achieve, but didn’t, was the nationalisation of the waters of the Murray-Darling Basin so that the government’s obligations under a number of international treaties relating mainly to wetlands and migratory birds could be implemented. 

 

Instead, state powers over water were referred to the Commonwealth in a “cooperative federalism” arrangement that still leaves states, through threats to withdraw, with real power over water.

 

The MDBA is the body through which the four states sharing the Basin make up the rules by which they circumvent their legal obligations under the Water Act. Those obligations are to establish the minimum required level of water in the system that would result in environmental sustainability, and to prioritise that over social and economic consumptive uses.

 

Scientists have determined that the Basin environment requires between 3900 and 7600 gigalitres (GLs) per annum. Through their unlawful inclusion of socio-economic factors alongside those of the environment, the MDBA has reduced this to 2750 GL, and has since brought this down through other frauds to 2100 GL.

 

The winners are what Tolarno Station grazier Rob McBride calls the 4Cs (cotton, China, corporates and corruption). They are connected in one way or another with the Northern irrigators and the foreign and local financial speculators who spin the wheels on the water trading tables. They are served, in turn, by the arrogant, anti-science and anti-people members of the National Party.

 

In a sign that things won’t get any better, Scummo has just appointed former cop and NSW Nationals leader Troy Grant, a former state MP for Dubbo and deputy premier of NSW, as Interim Inspector-General of Water Compliance of the MDBA. The Undertaker is in charge of the Old Rivers’ Home! Don’t forget that as Deputy Premier of NSW, Mr Grant threatened seven years’ jail for farmers and others disrupting any mining or gas related activity. 

 

Beasley covers lots of contentious ground, such as why a focus on postcodes was used to settle on the unlawful 2750 GL environmentally sustainable level of take, why a million or more fish had to die in the Barka/Darling, and the economic imperatives behind the deliberate destruction of the Menindee Lakes.

 

He does not deal, except in passing, with the water market (“an entirely different kettle of fuck-up”). 

 

He does, however, praise the validity of the original “Aboriginal Basin Plan” as enunciated before the Royal Commission by the late Ngarrindjerri elder Tom Trevorrow: “Don’t be greedy. Don’t take any more than you need to, and respect everything around you.”

 

With the Productivity Commission belatedly agreeing that First Peoples’ cultural needs for water be included in a revised National Water Initiative, Ngarrindjerri and other First Peoples’ wisdoms may yet help us save the Murray-Darling Basin.

…………………………

Richard Beasley, Dead in the Water: a very angry book about our greatest environmental catastrophe…the death of the Murray-Darling Basin, Allen & Unwin, 2021, rrp $29.99 or free to be borrowed at your local library.

 

To keep up with the fight against the 4Cs, check out these fb pages regularly:

 

Tolarno Station

Watershed Alliance  

Speakup4water  

Menindee Region Community Group on the Darling River  

Broken Hill Menindee Lakes: WE WANT ACTION

Save the Murray Darling Rivers

River Lakes Coorong Action Group   

The Barka: Cry me a river…

 

(Above: The Barka River near Tilpa, NSW)

Written by: Nick G. on 23 January 2021

People living along the Barka (Darling) River remain angry at the lack of water coming down from southern Queensland and northern New South Wales.

The Barka has always been susceptible to the effects of drought, but its near-total ruin is the result of capitalist greed. Supporters of the Barka refer to the 4 “Cs” – cotton, China, corporates, corruption.

Cotton is an extremely thirsty plant and much of its water is held throughout the year in very large, shallow dams. Cotton growers have been accused of illegal diversion of surface water (water in rivers and lakes) and floodwater harvesting (building levees and canals which then direct flood waters into giant storage tanks instead of allowing it to make its way into the river or into the soil.) This is unregulated and unmonitored in NSW – a case of a public good being seized by private hands without any action taken by government.

A person who had paddled down the Barka wrote on Facebook: “we saw the massive pumps when paddling down the Darling. Sometimes 4 of the biggest Catapillar motors inline pumping massive amounts of water. Open channels that have huge water losses.”

Another Facebook post reads: “Yep they bleed these rivers dry I understand drought but this is a man-made drought it’s about time something is done about this it’s all for bloody greed and money and cotton…”

Another post says: “Drought man-made because of over extraction of water upstream, licensed and illegally taken by the unlawful use of Flood Plain Harvesting, unmetered, unmeasured and unpaid for by thieves and endorsed by Politicians of all Major Parties both State and Federal ....Liberal, National and yes Labour parties by their silence not calling out and the opposition all have to answer as to why they are allowing the destruction of our waterways…”

Yet another complains, “Flood plains harvesting is killing our rivers system and making droughts longer and more difficult to cope with. Water from the floods belongs to every one along the entire river systems from streams creeks billabongs and our rivers.”

China is a major purchaser of Australia water entitlements. Part of that is linked to its involvement in cotton growing.  According to the Australia Tax Office’s Register of Foreign Ownership, in 2019 China owned 1.9% of Australia’s total water entitlements, but was closely followed by the US (1.8%) and the UK (1%).  

Although these figures seem small, the private water market is still relatively young and the foreign share is growing. Foreign held water entitlements in Northern Murray Darling Basin (MDB) increased by 32.5% between 2018-9.

Corporates include the huge agribusinesses that have purchased prime agricultural land and turned it over to heavily water dependent single crops including cotton, but also including almonds and walnuts. Single cropping over huge areas contributes to loss of biodiversity. They also include finance companies speculating in “blue gold” (water) now that water entitlements can be bought by companies not involved in irrigation and held until rising prices make resale profitable enough.

A Facebook comment on corporations reads: “Corporations do not give a f**k about what happens as a result of a board meeting or an operational decision. Communities on the Darling or indeed in the MDB are irrelevant and surplus to the corporations’ requirements. This is pretty obvious by the way they adhere to pumping rules and control politicians. Everything a corporation does is for its bottom line, expansion and shareholders and nothing else.”

Corruption refers to the NSW government and to the National Party at both state and federal levels. Australia’s “Watergate” – the scandal that saw Barnaby Joyce, then federal minister for agriculture, pay $80 million to buy back water from a company linked to then energy minister Angas Taylor, even though nearby water had been assessed at zero value. 

As one Facebook commentator writes: “The corrupt bastards that govern our country haven’t got the guts to stand up to China or all the others that invest in water trading together they are killing our rivers and destroying our farmers, without water where will our food come from…”

But it is the National politicians in NSW who are being focused on in the Barka debate.   Water minister Melinda Pavey has angered communities along the Barka by claiming on commercial TV stations that the all storages, lakes and rivers are in flood and all is great. This Facebook post reveals the scorn with which many have greeted her claims: “would not trust her as far as I could piss into the wind, puppet for the northern irrigators and flood plains harvesting she lets them go willy nilly…”

Rob McBride of Tolarno Station writes: “The rivers and lakes are dying and by this occurring our First Nations traditions and cultures are being destroyed together with all our native fish species. The national party corrupts the liberals at every vote to drop transparency into water licences and ownership, the nationals must be obliterated at the next state and federal election if the rivers are ever going to get back to health.”

Contrary to the lies about the current health of the rivers peddled by Pavey on channels 7 and 9, locals know that “The River is in a horrific condition & the lakes barely exist as us locals remember.”

As the locals see it “The water stopped flowing over Bourke weir for two months. Once the flows stop there the lower part of the river drys up very quickly. In some parts near Loath and Wilcannia the river drys up completely so when water does come down from Bourke it’s always a first flow hence the muddy water look. Oh and the water stopped flowing over Bourke because the greedy cotton pricks took it all after the big rains early 2020.”

Another reports that “Menindee Lake is actually Totally Dry DRY DRY ...zilch in Menindee Lake ...Menindee Lake has NO ..None ...Nothing in it except dry Parched clay based soil, water being released is either from Pamaroo Lake or Lake Wetherall, part of the Menindee Lake Scheme which is currently under 20 % empty…” 

Locals have offered their own solutions to the death of the Barka.  One writes, “A first step would be no floodplain harvesting & extraction licences issued to land owners only, the water market is a big problem. Not to mention thirsty crops owned by mainly foreign investors. Fix them 3 points up & the once pristine Darling would be healthy again.”

First Peoples are keenly aware of the issues and Walgett Local Aboriginal Land Council called last year for the suspension of water trading in the Barwon Darling River System.

There is a widespread awareness of the need to defend our water and the rivers that carry it. Nearly 31,000 people follow the Facebook page of Tolarno Station, while the Broken Hill-based Watershed Alliance Facebook page has two and a half thousand members and is supporting an event in Sydney this weekend at which Uncle Bruce Shillingsworth has issued the invitation, “Yaama come along and support our rivers (BAAKA) let’s stop the big greedy corporates taking over #WATERISLIFE”.

There is a solid basis for unity between the organised working class movement and defenders of the rivers who by and large are opposed to foreign ownership, support biodiversity and the environment, and reject corporate greed and the corruption that sustains it.

(For a wider exploration of these and related issues, download our pdf book “Fight capitalism’s destructive impact on nature” here.)

Exploiters take advantage of the drought

by Duncan B.

Supermarkets Hurting Egg Producers 

Egg farmers fear that dozens of egg farms could be wiped out in the near future. Because of the drought, their feed costs have increased considerably, up from $420 a tonne twelve months ago to $640 a tonne today.

On the other hand, egg farmers are alleging that supermarkets are refusing to renegotiate prices with producers. Tenders for supply of eggs that were supposed to have been called in November have not been called, and may not be called until later in the year. This is despite the situation where farmers are selling eggs below the cost of production.

Supermarkets are trying to keep egg prices under control while they try to phase out cage-laid eggs which make up half of Australia’s production.  Producers believe that supermarkets want them to supply free-range eggs at cage-laid prices. This is not possible due to the higher costs associated with free-range eggs.

Speculators Cash In On Water

Speculators are diving in to the Murray-Darling Basin’s irrigation markets as water prices surge due to the drought. One investment company has spent $16.4 million on 64,500 megalitres of water. Water prices have risen from $175/ML last year to about $500/ML on the Murray and $700 on the Darling.

Irrigators allege that speculators are pushing up water prices, squeezing higher prices out of an inflated water market to pour into investors’ pockets. They say that investors can hoard water and change the price in times of low supply and drought. Speculators are looking for higher water prices, while irrigators using the water need the price to drop. Higher water prices mean less investment in irrigated crops. Currently, speculators are offering large volumes of water for sale at inflated prices. Investors own about 8-9% of the Murray-Darling water.

Vanguard has said it many times before and we will say it again. Farmers and workers have the same enemies. Workers need good quality food at reasonable prices. Farmers deserve to be able to make a living from their produce. The supermarkets, banks, agri-business companies and other exploiters, many of them foreign-owned, must be defeated!