Viv Forbes, Stuck on Red & Other Essays (First Published by “Business Queensland” and “Common Sense” in 1990), pp. 61-64.About the Author»
I seldom agree with a greenie.
Too many of them are arrogant, narrow-minded, neurotic, anti-development doom-mongers. Many are totalitarians at heart, with a pathetic belief in centralised bureaucratic controls. They show no understanding of market solutions and no respect for individual liberties or private property. They see other human beings as a blight on mother earth. And despite the religious fervour of their public pronouncements, their private actions often reveal a staggering hypocrisy.
However, I must agree with recent comments by conservationist, Doug Yuille, on water conservation. He observed, wisely, that unless water users are made to pay for the resource they consume, we will soon face a critical water shortage.
Water is the commonest liquid on earth. It is infinitely more abundant than petrol, beer, milk, coca-cola, eau-de-cologne or whiskey. And Australia has far more water per head of population that Europe, Russia or America. Yet it is the only liquid which is regularly rationed by governments.
This is caused by our wasteful method of pricing. For most consumers, the charge for water bears no relation to its cost or to the amount used. For many, water is “free” and therefore wasted.
Our looming water crisis is caused not by climate or hydrology, it is the product of politics.
Imagine the results if beer was supplied in the same way as water.
All beer would be brewed by the Brisbane Beer Board. Beer would be free but there would be a beer tax levied on all home owners. The beer tax assessment would depend not on how much beer you drank, or even whether you drank, but on the improved value of your land. In this topsy-turvy would, beer would be supplied in abundance during winter but strictly rationed in hot dry times. Every summer, people with even Medicare numbers would be allowed to drink on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and odd numbers on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Only communion wine would be available on Sundays.
As a further conservation measure, all beer must be drunk from liqueur glasses and inspectors from the Beer Authority would be employed to prosecute drinkers caught using pots or middies in summer. The media would froth and foam about the beer crisis and politicians would open every election with promises to build more breweries.
This is the economic system which caused the queues and famines in Russia, just as it causes water rationing in the Lucky Country. Were beer really supplied on this basis, there would soon be beer ration cards and long queues outside every bar in Australia. (And beer consumption would be far higher, which is the point raised by our conservationist.)
The solution to the water “crisis” lies not in stricter rationing nor in 25 year plans, but in charging what it costs.
A survey of the Warwick City Council revealed that three quarters of city water is used on lawns. A continuation of our “free” water policy will thus see more productive farm land covered by dams in order to irrigate unproductive city lawns. Our free water is costing too dam much.
Were water consumers charged for what they use, many would think that the cheapest source of water for gardens is a rain-water tank. This huge and convenient catchment — the roofs of city buildings — is ignored or prohibited by our water planners.
Others would re-assess the value of lawns which have to be regularly sprinkled with expensive water so they can be regularly mowed with expensive petrol. They would also review the full cost of sewage compared to less wasteful recycling technologies such as septics.
When users pay for their own, the inventive frugality of millions of water users will conserve far more water than will ever be saved by all the platoons of sprinkler policemen. (Gatton found that when rationing was introduced, half the town used more water on their first sprinkling day than the whole town used before rationing.)
Thus pricing reform is our top water priority. The second priority is privatisation of the water industry.
Most people have heard of Margaret Thatcher’s sale of ten British water companies for over ten billion dollars. Less is known about France, which has had a largely privatised water system for more than a century and where 60% of the population is served by private water companies.
There are five nationwide private water companies in France plus many smaller ones. The biggest, Compagnie Generale des Eaux, operates with Paris Water Authority and supplies 144 communes with more than 4 million people. This company, founded in 1853, has 70,000 employees and manages water and waste-water utilities for more than a third of the population of France. It has subsidiaries in Spain, Italy, Britain and America.
The French are very discriminating about the taste of their water, as evidenced by their long tradition of bottled water. Their water companies thus emphasise water quality and dependability and take pride in their ability to meet peak demand while maintaining constant prices.
The General Water Company does all this and also returns an average of 14% on shareholder’s funds.
I first put forward the Greenie position on water conservation in 1978 when I advocated that the Brisbane City Council install water meters to solve our chronic water shortages (and to slow down their costly and divisive dam building program).
I obviously made no impression on the council as they held an auction sale of 34,662 water meters in 1981. (These were the last of a batch of 60,000 water meters purchased by that far-sighted Lord Mayor, Clem Jones, in 1974.)
However, reality eventually catches up, even with politicians, and Sallyanne has decided, in a very tentative way, that water meters are on the way in again. I congratulate her. Their cost will soon be recouped by the postponement of capital expenditure on even more dams, pipelines or pumping stations.
However, Brisbane is way behind the Hunter Water Board, which introduced user-pay water pricing in 1982. This caused a big reduction in the growth in water usage and allowed the deferral of major construction works, including the building of a new dam. Residents no longer pay for water on their property value — they pay a fixed service fee and a variable water usage charge.
We must get politicians out of our water. Their pricing system is wasteful, their compulsory acquisition of dam sites is intolerable and the quality and cost of their product is generally sub-standard. And their love of centralisation will make these problems worse, not better.
Who should own and manage our water? Maybe we should turn it over to Coca-Cola or Power Brewing — they never seem to run short, on even the hottest day.
