I'm not sure of the main point of your article. Is it that water trading is a poor way to reduce irrigation (or water use in general) compared to some kind of central planning? You state that "It treats “the market” as more natural than nature itself" but you propose no superior alternative.

You try to identify a problem of foreign companies buying water, but how is this a problem? If they are spectulating on the price and have no storage, then there is simple more water for the environment. That they buy the water in a voluntary market means that whoever sold them the water has also benefited.

Clearly the market works to allocate water to the most efficient users, and the cap on volume is the key to maintaining ecological flows. One does not work without the other, and together they seems to provide a pretty good outcome for both irrigators and the environment.

This is an excellent article until it gets to the defeatist conclusion that it's too late to do anything about the emergence of a privatised water market.

We are already aware of the challenges posed by climate warming, water shortages and the need for improved water infrastructure. It is also likely that in the context of the market, water is significantly undervalued and could double or triple in price. Hence the active interest of speculators and profiteers such as Californian-based Summit Global Management Inc in investing in a commodity which it declares is "still abusively undervalued relative to its real economic worth, so huge room exists for asset price expansion."

We cannot aford to leave unfettered corporate greed to demand and extract exponential increases in the cost of water from the Australian environment and people. It is a nonsense that billions of dollars of taxpayers' money should be wasted "buying back" what should belong to the Australian people as a common good in the first place!

In the short term, the Rudd Government must regulate the water market to ensure equity and access, and to control increases in the price of water, as well as securing water for environmental flows all the way to and through the mouth of the Murray.

In the longer term, water must be protected as a public trust, as a common good, within a new anti-imperialist and republican Constitution (the current Constitution is a weak and inefficient compromise between vested interests as they existed over a century ago). Private water service providers must be nationalised without compensation and a national public authority created to ensure fair water allocation and a healthy freshwater ecosystem.

Rather than being "too late" the time is just right for pursuing such a program with vision and optimism.

As long as Murray Water allocations are reduced sufficiently so that the river can be sustained if constant flows of 28 per cent and seasonal flows of up to 50 per cent are restored to the Snowy River below Jindabyne Dam, and also the Mowamba Aqueduct decomissioned permanently.

As long as "water right" means "the right to buy water from the water authority", there can be no problem. Water is available for irrigation as a result of a substantial infrastructure. Entities holding water rights should therefore at least be liable for maintenance of the infrastructure, and arguably for its improvement also. There is a very clear parallel between a landowner paying rates and a holder of water rights bearing a recurrent liability to a water authority.

Fester, set your nasty little heart at rest, very few irrigators, on controlled streams, where infrastructure like dams, augment the availability of water do not pay an access fee. They also pay a usage fee, for the water they take.

Those like me, where we have a licence to take water from a natural river, if any is available, pay only a licence fee. You will also be pleased to know that this fee increased by 1000% recently.

A couple of my mates, on a controlled stream, are of course only second class citizens. Although they pay $22,000 pa access fee, they only get water, when the dam is above 20% full. This despite the fact that the dam was built as an irrigation dam. Recent urban development takes precedence for the water.

From the point of view of equity, it does get worse. For 3 years these farmers got no water for their $22,000 pa, but injury became insult when the dam finally did get some water.

Once the dam neared the 20% trigger point, for some irrigation water supply, our lovely government decided they would rather supply the water to a power station.

The last insult was when the state government, forced the local council to fund, most of the pipe that was built, so the state could steal their water, from their farmers, & sell it, at great proffit, to the power station.

When it comes to the Murray Darling, what could be more immoral than to let large quantities of Queensland & NSW water evaporate uselessly in central Australia, so a small percentage of it can be used to fill an artificial water sky/irrigation dam, the Coorong in South Australia.

Michale really has a problem, doesn't he?

He can't decide if he's a teacher, an historian, an ABC presenter, or a producer of fiction.

Well, at least with this book add, we do know that the producer of fiction won, handsomely.

First we get the salt bit, with no history allowed. The fact that the Darling was too salt for man, or stock, when it was first found, by our explorers is forgotten.

Then the 1991 blue-rgeen algae bloom. Somehow our amature historian has managed to forget the federation drought, & the attendant algae bloom, which made the 91 effort a minor event.

Next we get the coorong trotted out to cry about. The damn thing is a dam. It's used to spread irrigation water around the area, for the dairy farmers.

He should perhaps, ask the people of Brisbane what happens when there is a period of reduced run off. The dams dry up, particularly if you keep using the water as if the is no tomorrow.

The farmers in QLD, NSW, & Vic, have all been on much reduced [20% or less], or no irrigation allocation for years, while the South Australian irrigators, have been complaining about only getting 80% allocation, the poor dears.

Drought is one reason for less run off, but far from the only one. Many others are caused by government, introducing laws, promoted by twits like Michale.

Next he wants a central authority, deciding which farms should loose their water, no doubt staffed by "experts" like himself. It's not surprising that he also believes he & his mates, should decide what farmers should grow.

Well, the last time these type controls were applied to aggriculture was the Farming colllectives of Russia, & China. Millions starved.

What cwn we do to rid our country of these control freaks, who know it all, from the seat in the tower. That's the ivory one