The ACCC has been touring the basin disseminating their findings from reviews into the now nearly $2 billion unregulated water trading scheme.

The ACCC stated that water trading has its origins in informal arrangements between neighbouring farmers, where one farmer’s excess water could be transferred to a neighbour. This does seem like a logical arrangement, trading between farmers in existing irrigation districts. The same historical irrigation districts that were regulated within a similar geographical footprint. 

Now, according to the ACCC, water trading has brought substantial benefits to many users across the basin, benefits like earning an income from trading water or releasing capital, or trading to a higher value user. 

Now other countries, state and federal governments, ministers, bankers, full-time traders and speculators can all have a slice of this juicy, delicious, unregulated industry.

The meeting at Deniliquin had limited attendees. Was it that this is just another report with non-binding recommendations? Recommendations to the very governments who advocated for a full capitalistic approach to the building blocks of life – water. 

Even with limited terms of reference, and limited and fragmented data, the ACCC did find many problems in their findings, including:

• Very few rules governing the conduct of market participants 
• Trading behaviours that can undermine the integrity of markets, such as market manipulation and insider trading
• The rules, policies and arrangements that enable and support trade in the Southern Connected System do not always adequately reflect scarce storage and delivery capacity, and this has led to river channel congestion and negative third party and environmental impacts.

What was raised at the meeting has been raised before. Legal and illegal, and right and wrong, are often two different things. To that end, you must remember the law makers made this plan. In fact, many of the behaviours fall into other words politicians or bureaucrats never seem to mutter, words like ‘tyranny’, ‘corruption’, ‘collusion’, and even ‘treason’.

After attending the Griffith meeting, NSW state MP for Murray, Helen Dalton, has urged the NSW Government to immediately implement a recommendation from Australia’s competition watchdog to end the secrecy behind water trading within irrigation corporations. 

“Secrecy is the mother of corruption,” Mrs Dalton said.

“It’s a key reason we are seeing big corporations make millions from water trading while small family farmers go broke. 

“At the Griffith forum on Tuesday, the ACCC made it clear that state governments would need to change their laws to end the secrecy within our water markets. 

“In NSW, there is no transparency over how irrigation corporations such as Murrumbidgee Irrigation and Coleambally Irrigation manage water held within their scheme.” 

Mrs Dalton said irrigation corporations are private companies which operate water service infrastructure to deliver water to irrigators. 

“In Victoria, water trading within irrigation corporations is recorded on a state register,” Mrs Dalton said, “But not in NSW, where irrigation corporations operate in complete secrecy.

“Water is the only market in Australia where you can make a $1 million transaction and not even reveal your ABN (Australian Business Number). 

“Criminals could be laundering money within irrigation schemes and nobody would know about it.

“In response to a question I asked, the ACCC said their report recommends all irrigation corporations should be required to report water trading within its scheme to a central authority (recommendation 7). It’s up the NSW Government to change the law and make this happen.” 

The Griffith ACCC forum, held at the Griffith Ex-Serviceman’s Club, was also poorly attended, with empty seats outnumbering audience members. 

“People are sick of inquiries, they’ve lost faith,” Mrs Dalton said. 

“We’ve had more than 100 inquiries and reports into water over the past 15 years.

“We know what’s wrong, the NSW Government needs to change the law.

“If the government was serious about fixing our water problems, it would have passed my bill for a public water register, but they voted against my bill three times. After that, they announced yet another inquiry.”

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 6 May 2021.

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