Water Under Capitalism – The Murray-Darling Experience
Recent rains may have given temporary relief to some communities facing an unprecedented water crisis, but the long dry has raised deeper, ongoing questions about the right of access to water under capitalism. Corruption and the corporate first agenda have become burning issues and people facing the twin scourge of capitalist priorities and the related climate change emergency are questioning the system’s claims about fundamental rights as never before. The questioning needs to go deeper.
The scene is bleak. Millions of fish have died in the Lower Darling. Farmers have walked off the land and sold their water rights to water-hungry agri-business. Those monopolies have flouted the law and pumped billions and billions of litres of water into massive private water storage dams. Tributaries have run dry and communities have been left without any water at all. Towns as big as Broken Hill faced the prospect of simply running out of water and the threat has not completely receded.
Authorities appear powerless or do not use compliance inspection and appropriate penalties to alleviate the situation. In fact, these controls have been thwarted by the pro-monopoly bodies supposedly in charge of protecting the public and the environment.
“The obscene behaviour of the “invisible hand” of capitalist markets is becoming more obvious all the time”
Politicians cut sweetheart deal with monopoly irrigators, mainly to pump water bought back with taxpayers’ dollars from family farmers and gifted it to the cotton industry. That water was supposed to be returned to the struggling environment and for the use and enjoyment of communities downstream. Pipelines and dams are discussed but the crisis drags on.
Cotton monopolies have tampered with water meters, neglected to keep logbooks and shown no compassion to water-frugal communities dependent on what they have hoarded. They buy up water rights and sell them at a massive profit to desperate smaller farmers during times of drought. The obscene behaviour of the “invisible hand” of capitalist markets is becoming more obvious all the time.
But how can this be? How can a supposedly managed resource subject to a plan administered by the federal government’s Murray-Darling Basin Authority and backed up by the Water Act of 2000 be so out of control? The drought is a factor, but the main culprit is the corrupting influence of big business.
A Royal Commission in SA into the Murray-Darling Basin concluded in February that the MDBA acted unlawfully and ignored available science, including climate science, in the time it has been overseeing water use along the river system. A lack of transparency and downright secrecy cover the scandalous truth of monopoly theft of the most vital public resource of all.
“Lenin once said that “if geometrical axioms affected human interests attempts would certainly be made to refute them.” Climate and other science and the simple fact of the devastation of communities along the Murray-Darling should be enough to shut down the racket currently being run in the water industry”
The “fixes” recommended are the usual ones of greater transparency, more oversight and inspection, engagement of the community, a Commonwealth Royal Commission and so on. These are worthy reforms, but they are not enough. They will become simply the next challenge for the monopolies’ lawyers and politician friends to hollow out. Systemic change is the only answer.
Lenin once said that “if geometrical axioms affected human interests attempts would certainly be made to refute them.” Climate and other science and the simple fact of the devastation of communities along the Murray-Darling should be enough to shut down the racket currently being run in the water industry. But they’re not. They have been trumped by the financial interest that agri-business has in the current crisis-ridden system. The example of the abuse of water resources is not isolated – it is replicated throughout the social, political and economic system we call capitalism.
Communities and smaller producers are tired of this diseased system but still can’t call it by its name. They find it hard to imagine the alternative – socialism – with collective ownership of all resources and assets and a democratically-devised plan that puts human and environmental needs first. It is the job of the Australian Communist Party to organise people to resist capitalist domination of our lives and work towards a just and equitable socialist society. It’s not just a question of lifestyle choice; it’s a matter of survival.