Great Article Kelly. If our water is going to be so blatently exploited why don't the extractive industries, and I refer not only to the mining industries but also the coal seam gas industry, pay for the groundwater they extract instead of being classed as "waste" or "incidental" water which they dispose of in any way they can. It is well established that this massive extraction results in the lowering of the water tables at the peril of surrounding towns and farmers. At Penny Wong's figures of $2500 per megalitre, this would give the money grubbing state government a windfall.

Fantastic Article!
"What Australia urgently needs, as former diplomat Bruce Haigh has recommended on several occasions, is a national regulatory authority with teeth, answering to the Federal Parliament, that can manage, regulate and allocate water in the interests of the country as a whole."
This would definitely be a step in the right direction, though I personally would expand the authority over such a (highly beneficial) organization, further than federal government (in case they want to make a sell-off and the regulator is standing in their way).

But quite frankly the act of privatizing major water channels and bodies should be an outright crime with a prison sentence! Anything further than a well on your property is nothing more than having zero exclusive control over, and if necessary (eg for industry), an allocation of an amount of water from the grid- only the water they receive can become private property until it's flushed.

why isn't there any sense of growing public awareness and uneasiness about these water profiteers?

We might wake up one day and find that what we thought was free now has a price, and it's not a competitive one, either.

Water is a basic human right and if we lose it to the 'free' market, we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves.

We'll wind up with the worst of all possible worlds.

" ... a national regulatory authority with teeth ... answering to the Federal Parliament ...", now THERE'S a novel idea! Unfortunately such a suggestion smacks of some sort of socialism, and we most definitely won't be having any of THAT whilst we have got The Free Market to protect and grow "Australia's interests" ... going forward!

Malcolm Turnbull, is also keen to pivatize water.

The private debate usual states that by privatising public untilities leads to improved effeciencies, cost effectiveness etc.

In reality as what is happening with power and gas, that after cornering the market. Prices rise, people reduce their consumption profits decrease, and prices rise to cover the losses caused by reduced consumption.

In Victoria, the conservation of water led to an increase in prices, because water utilities were loosing money.

Not only water should be put under government control, but air, land, trees, grass, farming, mining - all production really. I mean, government can presumptively fix anything, so why waste time with individual freedom and private property? That way our society will not only be more physically productive, but fairer as well... right, Kelly?

Kelly?

The great fallacy underlying this article is "because problem, therefore government is the solution": a complete non sequitur. Somehow all the different conflicting values at play can be known and fairly reconciled by centralised command-and-control bureaucracies. They just know everything.

It doesn't matter how much this belief is disproved by theory or practice, the socialists just keep on believing it. It is a recipe for environmental disaster, as much in Australia as governmental control of water was in the USSR.

The flaw is to assume that central planning is capable of providing an alternative economic system. It isn't, and those who think it is, are simply parroting stupid Marxism that was refuted over a hundred years ago. Kelly understands that bullying and violating people does not make good policy when it comes to the Afghans, but thinks it's a wonderful idea for Australian government to do to Australians. Kelly, get this - it doesn't matter how much weaponry you can concentrate on the problem, government is still not going to be able to solve the problem of how best to allocate scarce water to all its different possible competing values. There is no reason to think Julia Gillard knows. There is no reason to think any of her delegates knows. And that's the end of the matter. The rest is just pink-battsism.