Unbundling water from land

As one of the driest cities anywhere in the world, it makes no sense to export water from Adelaide. Since they also control Ballarat’s water, they could start planning to export water along the same pipeline that is needed currently to bring water into this very dry inland Australian city.

Bechtel, a US-based company which, like Kellogg Brown and Root, has been active in “reconstruction” in Iraq, also has concessions elsewhere in Australia.

While the water trading discussion is currently focused on talk about trade within Australia, the endgame is about exporting water from Australia, the driest continent.

There are two recent moves that suggest this. The Australia US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) enables US-based companies special access to Australian markets. Water was not excluded from the treaty. The result is that US-based companies such as Bechtel, Halliburton, and Kellogg Brown and Root can move into operating in Australia without meeting any arduous requirements.

The other international treaty that affects water in Australia is the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) that applies to all countries who are members of the World Trade Organisation, that is 149 countries with 32 more with observer status, is a very broad trade agreement covering all services - and once water is tradable, once it is transferable between private parties, it becomes a service. The interesting thing about GATS is that it includes water in its “rules and regulations”. Although it is possible for governments before ratifying the agreement to name “exclusions”. The GATS text identifies a host of ways in which water can be considered a service:

It has sections that cover sewer services, freshwater services, treatment of waste water, nature and landscape protection, construction of water pipes, waterways, tankers, groundwater assessment, irrigation, dams, bottled water, water transport services, and the like. In the second round offer made by Australia in May 2005 there are exclusions on “the provision of water for human use, including water collection, purification and distribution through mains” (AFTINET June 2005).

Somewhat surprisingly, Australia has named water as an exclusion to the GATS agreement. Surprising  because we have had, in the Howard Government, a gung-ho attitude to free trade for the past decade. But there is one thing Howard likes better, and that is to kowtow to the Bush administration. So, when water was excluded by Australia from the GATS agreement, there was celebration among Fair Trade activists.

But I fear that this celebration came too quickly. I say so because water is not excluded from the AUSFTA, but its exclusion from GATS heightens the ability of US-based water corporations to make very big profits in Australia. As the Europeans have a head start on water corporations, the exclusion of water from GATS is likely a gift to US-based water lords.

In the lead up to the AUSFTA, it was clear that there were going to be many downsides for Australians in this agreement. One I highlighted at the time was: “Water and other utility services will be increasingly privatised and public ownership and access threatened. The result is profit at the expense of access and safety” (Hawthorne 2003).

With many of the US-based companies finding a foothold in concessions around the country in metropolitan and regional centres, it may well be that in excluding water from GATS but not from the AUSFTA we have simply swapped one lot of water lords for another.

The water on our planet is one of the crucial ingredients that makes life possible. Without water none of us can survive more than a few days. Access to water should not be a tradeable resource. Separating water from land is just the first move in a number of legal rewritings which we can expect to see in coming years.

If you think Howard’s move on saving the Murray Darling Basin is important, look closer, read the small print, look out for separations. They are markers of far worse things to come.

Confusing citizens by claiming one thing while doing another is becoming a frequently used strategy by governments to persuade us that they really have our interests at heart. While Howard claims to speak against postmodernism, his political shillyshallying with multiple moves and shapeshifting flexibility is an indicator of just how well he has learnt the postmodern tango. Don’t be fooled by this bipartisan concern about water. It is rooted in profit-making and unaccountability.