Barnaby Joyce is on the money with the dry topic of water

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I like Barnaby Joyce but he gets the rough end of the pineapple, as the Queenslanders say. While Minister for Trade Andrew Robb is knocking off trade deal after trade deal with a big Chinese one due this weekend, Barnaby is copping it because the sugar farmers of Queensland are missing out again.

I am certain BJ would have liked a better result for the cane growers, but he's got his eye on a bigger problem and potential prize – water!

Barnaby says we're in a sweet spot in agriculture, but if are to take advantage of the great markets to the north "it will not happen by accident - it will happen by planning". In August he said there had to be investment in water resources. "Why doesn't he just say dams," says Louise. But he's right, and last week in Canberra he made it so very obvious by saying "water is wealth and stored water is a bank".

Our researcher Charlie is an expert on water. He's convinced that it's the most important thing in the world and there is a mountain of research to prove that you're in trouble if you don't get it right.

When I was on the board of a global advertising company, I kept hearing about the BRIC economy - the combined new economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, which are starting to drive the world.

But they've got their problems. Take Brazil. Its largest city, Sao Paulo, is home to 20 million people and could, on some predictions, run completely out of water by the end of this month due to severe drought and poor environmental management. They're down to 10 per cent supply. And it's not just a matter of human hydration and agriculture – it's also the hydroelectrical system that provides 75 per cent of the country's power.

But we've heard it all before. One of the great tourist destinations of the world, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, was a booming civilisation for 600 years until the 15th century. At its height it had a population of 1 million when London had barely 50,000. Its prosperous economy was driven by sophisticated tropical irrigation systems, but prolonged drought and inadequate water storage brought it all to an end.

Look at Bali today - 260 of its 400 rivers have dried up. Not that most tourists seem to think it's a problem; the last thing they want to drink is water. But nearly half of Bali's inhabitants (1.7 million people) do not have access to clean water. The water table is falling, they cannot afford to connect to city water and the lack of water is threatening agriculture across the island. Bali is in trouble.

So back to Barnaby Joyce. He tells me there is a battle ahead. All the familiar opponents are at the ready and unless there is catastrophe just around the corner, there aren't many votes in water.

The former Victorian government has been criticised for building a desalination plant that hasn't been used yet. How quickly we forget that at the height of the drought only five years ago Melbourne would have run out of water within 12 months if the weather trend continued.

In April 2007 Prime Minister John Howard was urging us to pray for rain because "millions of people along the Murray Darling Basin will only have enough water for domestic purposes from the middle of the year".

We simply must not get ourselves into that position again. My tip is that the deal plant will have to fire up at some stage and I'm glad we've got it.


But we need a farsighted approach like that for the entire country. We need a 100-year plan from a political system that measures itself by 100 days at a time.

I'm sorry that Barnaby Joyce is copping it from the cane growers, although Louise thinks that one of the best things we could do is stop consuming sugar completely - and at the same time give up eating meat.

Perhaps they are things we could go without, but try surviving a week without water. It's time to get serious. We've got to act now or we could easily end up like Sao Paulo, Bali or worse – Angkor Wat.

http://m.theage.com.au/business/comm...13-11m126.html


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