Yesterday Crikey covered the background, impact and sudden surge of interest in the water buyback scandal (which has quickly been dubbed “watergate”). After Bernard Keane suggested this was just “business as usual”, some readers picked up the calls for a federal ICAC. Meanwhile, debate about Israel Folau and Rugby Australia rolls on.
On the water buyback scandal
Quentin Dempster writes: Bernard exonerates the water buyback process as just another example of Australian capitalism and its handmaiden government doing business as usual. This is undoubtedly true but it is an accountability cop-out, particularly as, helpfully, Bernard has listed all those other examples of expediency, vested influence peddling and political slush funding.
Both “sides” of federal politics have engaged in this conduct. That is why Australia needs a National Integrity Commission, or federal ICAC, adequately resourced, with untouchable commissioners and the full suite of coercive powers. Its mere existence would start to change a political and corporate culture which has become conducive to implementation and regulatory failure and, in all likelihood, corruption and criminality beyond breaches of ministerial codes.
How do we know if contentious water buybacks are legal and compliant unless we investigate thoroughly?
John Brooker writes: It gives me the shits. Don’t know about everybody else. We definitely need a federal independent anti-corruption commission (i.e. one whose membership is not stacked with party hacks or ideologues faithful to one side of politics or the other).
Alistair Watson writes: Whatever the tawdry detail of buybacks of rights to harvest floodwaters in the northern part of the Murray-Darling Basin, the $80 million involved is a minuscule part of the overall cost of the deeply-flawed Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Starting life as drought-induced panic and Australia Day stunt in the death throes of the Howard government in 2007, the plan has gone downhill from there.
The worst part is expenditure of billions of dollars on on-farm and off-farm irrigation infrastructure in the questionable name of water saving, as if the private capital requirements of irrigators should be paid for by taxpayers unlike other farming industries and the rest of small business. Moreover, there is no provision for depreciation accompanying this massive expenditure meaning that many irrigators will be worse off down the track.
Not just the Commonwealth, the states have a shoddy record in water policy. In particular, the Bracks-Brumby-Thwaites exercise of mid-2007 has lumbered Victorians with a more or less unused jumbo-sized desalination plant, a pipeline connecting the Goulburn Valley and Melbourne that is politically off-limits given the veto exercised by irrigators, and an uncompleted space age irrigation system in the Goulburn Valley, costing $2 billion and still counting, that is already a stranded asset because water has traded away from the uncompetitive irrigated dairy industry to downstream horticultural industries.
Australian politicians have always played it by ear in irrigation policy, ignoring abundant local expertise and empirical information available for decades. In hydraulic matters, our politicians lack the defining characteristic of the higher primates; the ability to learn from experience.
On the Israel Folau case
Mark E Smith writes: A root part of the problem and why sport needs to have these rules is the absurd notion of sport stars as role models. I’ve never in my life thought of any sport players as role models or anything vaguely along those lines. I’ve admired one or two as thinkers but really, sport and deep thought tend not to go together. Time to knock this role model nonsense on the head. Who’ll take on the task though?
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Mark Smith is technically correct when he says that Israel Folau and other sports people are not role models. Unfortunately, they’re something more insidious — they are the sort of individuals/things/concepts which can be used to sway opinion and the buying of products. Rugby Australia is well aware of this, of course, which is why it tries to keep Wallabies and Super Rugby players under some control. It has it own image and marketing strategies to protect. It does not need any sort of turmoil anywhere near itself. As I’ve said before, Israel Folau has condemned a wide-ranging list of people to hell, and gays are only a small part of his whole target group. Rugby Australia depends on more than just gays for its crowds and community support. RA may therefore be happy enough for gays to be getting almost all the attention in the latest Folau kerfuffle, because offending all the others on Folau’s list would be disastrous.
Mark Smith I couldn’t agree more. Sports stars should never be role models but as you say who will take on the task of leading the change to our culture and importantly how can this be achieved?
In the meantime we are stuck with this legacy and those who step up into sports star roles know they will not only be remunerated exceedingly well but the implied deal is that they will be regarded as role models and the expectation is they need to accept this responsibility and think of how they influence, especially younger impressionable people.
That is why the Israel Folau case must be regarded as a hanging offence. It’s not ok to step up and accept the accolades of being a sports star and knowing with it comes role model status and then for Folau to say he has a right to his religious views. As the old adage says, you can’t have your cake and eat it. Make no mistake he knew exactly what he was doing. He needs to face the consequences.
It’s up to Rugby Australia or any other sports body to decide if they want their players to be role models, and if that is what they decide, that is what it is. Sorry for those who think “it’s not right” or whatever. Suck it up and get the recalcitrant types out of the sport. Let us see how they enjoy it.
Alistair Watson 10+
We Do Not Need Yet More Useless Reports! We Need Action!
What do we do to upset the deeply corrupting Laberal duopoly? Attack the old-boy network for starters! Those with power in administrative and governmental organisations will take care to protect one another by supporting their actions or finding an equally cushy little number for those who have too publicly failed. We need to send their class a very powerful message that their survival really is subject to their performance.
Such people will disproportionately be homophobic, bullying, misogynistic, climate-change deniers with a huge Culture of Entitlement.
We are not utterly powerless. One disproportionately effective act by the independents (who potentially decide legislation in the Lower House), and indeed by minor parties and independents and unions and community organisations, and indeed by ourselves, would be to demand that governments, individuals and organisations refuse to deal with politicians and public sector decision-makers and union and business organisation officials
—– (a) who then moved to the profit-seeking sector within the last five years (Trump, the Right’s hero, imposed such a five-year ban at the beginning of 2018), or
—– (b) for five years after any such move, or
—–(c) for five years, those who in doing so breached their organisation’s policies (including but not limited to Ministerial Codes of Conduct).
No law changes or referenda required. Acting as a community we can refuse to deal with them, then administratively ban them when the opportunity offers. If nothing else, we can say to those we know about and to others about them, You Should Not Be Where You Are!
Weak by international standards, existing lobbying rules are rarely enforced, easily avoided, and attract little serious punishment. Exactly as the above desire.
Agree 10+. Also, there is that key word – ‘act’.
The blandishments, flattery, bribery and other temptations awaiting indies with a chance of balance of power are usually too tempting – most succumb, esp in the Senate with a 6yr tenure stretching ahead.
If the treats don’t work the threats aren’t far away.
Ask Peter Baldwin.