Billy wrote:
In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

Billy wrote:

David, you still going to be able to grow a garden, after the
Americans buy up your water rights?


Yes

"Australia has privatized its water totally, and basically it¹s now
for sale. And there¹s a big American investment firm that¹s actually
buying up water rights. It was supposed to be, originally, just to
get the farmers of the big farm conglomerates to share, to trade,
but now it¹s all gone private and international, so they¹re hardly
going to support something that says that water, is a human right,
when they¹ve commodified it and said it¹s a market commodity."
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2...declares_acces
s

This is a complex issue. The rights to the water that falls on the
catchment to public water supplies is broadly not for sale, the
Government holds onto that by excluding most of it from being a
tradeable commodity. In a city/suburban situation you can do
whatever you like with the water that falls on your property (and
the grey water you generate provided you don't poison people with
it) but you cannot sell it.

In the rural situation (which is me) every property owner has a
"harvestable right". Roughly speaking you can impound and use 10%
of the water that falls on your land but not from permanent
waterways. Additionally you can extract from permanent waterways an
unlimited amount for no cost for "bona fide domestic purposes". So
I could use that to grow whatever I like provided it is not a
commercial venture, this last constraint does in practice limit how
much you can extract. Neither of these rights are saleable.

In addition I own a water licence which permits me to extract a
specified amount of water from permanent waterways per annum for a
fairly nominal cost. This licence is saleable but only applies to
the specified catchment so it is not possible to buy up water
licences and use them wherever you like.

It is essential for proper long term water management for water to
be given a genuine and realistic value at least in commercial
quantities. In the past it was pretty much free in all
circumstances. What do people do with a resource that is "free"?
They over use it. I think you are familiar with the phrase "the
tragedy of the commons". So we have the absurdities of growing rice
and cotton in dryland areas by massive (and wasteful) irrigation and
more water being allocated from the Murray-Darling than is actually
available except in flood years. The sooner this water is given a
sensible value the sooner this kind of abuse will be gone.

As you can see the above quote is very misleading regarding the
ownership of water in Australia. As for the motivation of the Gov
to not want to vote for water as a basic right I have no clear idea
but Oz does vote with America on many issues for reasons that may
have nothing to do with the issue itself.

David

It does appear misleading. I can only hope that they are wrong about
the following as well.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2...declares_acces
s
At the global level, approximately one out of every eight people do
not have drinking water. In just one day, more than 200 million hours
of the time used by women is spent collecting and transporting water
for their homes. The lack of sanitation is even worse, because it
affects 2.6 billion people, which represents 40 percent of the global
population. According to the report of the World Health Organization
and of UNICEF of 2009, which is titled "Diarrhoea: Why Children Are
[Still] Dying and What We Can Do," every day 24,000 children die in
developing countries due to causes that can be prevented, such as
diarrhea, which is caused by contaminated water. This means that a
child dies every three-and-a-half seconds. . .

Brand new World Bank study says that the (water) demand is going to
exceed supply by 40 percent in twenty years. It¹s just a phenomenal
statement. And the human suffering behind that is just unbelievable.
And what this did was basically say that the United Nations has
decided it¹s not going to let huge populations leave them behind as
this crisis unfolds, that the new priority is to be given to these
populations without water and sanitation.

I know less about this topic but I suspect that it is true.

David