Come on Halduell, I supply my own water at considerable investment in tanks, pumps & underground reticulation system. I don't see you volunteering to pay for that, why the hell should I, & the hundreds of thousands like me, subsidise water to inner city greenies, who don't like dams, or the rest of the city population.

As for "Public ownership, public care", just ask the people of Brisbane about that. The public servants go home for the weekend, they get flooded next week, & you can't sue the pants off them, the way you can a company.

Hasbeen,
Let's be fair about this.
Rural development including for water supply usually has some degree or tax deductibility.
The gal tanks and pipes and pumps come from the cities after being imported or manufactured by city people.
City people pay water and sewage rates, including the greenies.
Maybe there is need for a revenue spike into your rain gauge. LOL.

As for public ownership and transfer of liability, there could be big costs for GBR ecosystem damage at Gladstone and to fisheries and whole Queensland coast tourism. http://www.gladstoneobserver.com.au/news/will-gpc-be-sold/1778735/

JF Aus. You have some interesting and seemingly good ideas, many of which would seem on first blush, to be eminently sensible.
However, there are some points of difference.
If wages increase so as to make local production more affordable, more and more of those asked to pay, will simply seek refuge offshore!
With the real likely outcome, more expenditure on fully imported products. And a lose lose option for Australia, every which way?
I favor a very different approach that would reverse that outcome, and the return of affordability, by the reduction of unavoidable costs.
Lets start with the biggest, energy!
What would you say to the virtual halving of domestic and industrial energy costs, with the savings enabling both lower production costs, and increased discretionary spending!
Because that's exactly what we would get, with publicly owned and operated thorium reactors producing our industrial energy, and some of our domestic energy. Coupled to the conversion of most residential power supply, to biogas driven ceramic cells; which, with a 80% energy coefficient, the best in the world, reduce power bills by as much as 75%!
Enact those pragmatic changes with legislation, that literally taxes the profit demanding middleman out of business!
The hoary old chestnut, that the government has no business in business, would then be replaced with the much more pragmatic; the profit demanding middleman has no business in business.
And when achieved, cut the cost of living, energy and production by half!
Even poor old Hasbeen, who can't see beyond his farm gate, burdensome city slickers and his immediate family, would have to agree with that?
The PM, given his public utterances, may well see coal and foreign investment/ownership as his personal future?
But it is clearly not the nations, nor in the national interest to continue to rely on it, when there are far more pragmatic, and vastly cheaper locally available alternatives/solutions!
Doing what you've always done only ever gets you what you've always got! The sound of an economy going down the gurgler!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty,
Thank you for your comment.
Evidence indicates wages must increase worldwide because it is economy’s worldwide that are in trouble, so to speak.
There is need for more marbles in the marble bags to do the playing and trading worldwide.
I think the biggest unavoidable cost is that for food. We can all go without buying energy but we have to eat.

How can costs be halved without halving something else, such as halving profit of suppliers? Even a nuclear power plant will reduce viability of coal fired power.
Surely the solution is to increase supply of money worldwide so that nobody loses and everybody stands to gain.

In any case energy cost should not be influenced and increased by CO2 non-sense, because it may well be there is another cause of change to climate, maybe multiple causes.

Government is an important vital player in establishing big new and therefor untested business, such as developing infrastructure to manage the water ecosystem of this planet.
Really that is no big deal. I think a bigger task was communicating from Melbourne to London for the first time not so long ago. But the government PMG made it happen including on a commercial basis.

I think use of coal will continue. Why not? Ignore the CO2 nonsense and think of coal as it really is. Most soot is filtered out these days. Furnaces are high tech and are still improving. Modern light bulbs have more than halved energy consumption.

Rhosty you hit the nail on the head with this; “Doing what you've always done only ever gets you what you've always got! The sound of an economy going down the gurgler!”

Has been knows if the tank is empty you fill it up.
He also knows that leaks have to be plugged and pumps have to be sometimes serviced and updated.

The world cash system is virtually empty and it needs topping up to cater to worldwide modern day demand and needs of government and private enterprise and consumers - the people.

Those much-vaunted Public Private Partnerships that NSW and Victoria seem to be especially fond of the build tollways are another source for ripping off the public.
The Private partners have to borrow their money at a higher rate than the State Governments can and the public hold all the financial liability if things go wrong.
We may get the "joy" of new toll roads in the short term but we end up paying far more for them than we really needed to.
While it's electorally good for the politicians it the public who end up over-paying.

Internationally the privatisation of water has been a series of scandals and failures.
As well as what happened in Bolivia, the UK experienced many instances where children were put into State Care because their parents could no longer afford running water in their homes.

When Telstra was sold off the impression given by the government was that we were only one of a couple of countries with a fully government-owned Telco.

This was a deliberate half-truth.

We are now only one of a few with NO government part-ownership in a National Carrier because the majority of countries in fact retained a majority shareholding in their Telcos.

Any farmer will tell you that you can milk a cow every day but you can only eat it once.

Wolly, "It is extremely clear that in privatised nursing homes, the elderly are being neglected as private operators try maximise their profits."

People like you with your lefty attitude make me sick. My mothers last days were destroyed by the slack, useless, bitch, weekend overpaid, nurses in a large public hospital. They were too slack to do their job, & make sure an immobile 98 year old was fed & watered on their watch. They were too busy picking up their full weeks pay for 2 weekend shifts to bother even looking at what they should have been doing.

When I visited there were 3 meals, & 30 hours of liquid sitting out of reach, & she was delirious with dehydration. She could never walk again.

I'm surprised you didn't hear about it, I shouted loud enough for you to hear, where ever you live. I have never seen so many bureaucrats appear from no where when I started mentioning legal action, & that on a Sunday.

Our local public hospital refused to take her, as her high platelet count was beyond their capability they said for god's sake. Take her to a nursing home, not here they said. That's right, a nursing home with no doctor. It is a wonder all the bureaucrats survived, I must be getting tame.

It was a local nursing home that had to nurse her back to some level of health. About half the staff in public hospitals are more likely to kill, than help you.