The more you read about the drought and water buy-back scandal the more it becomes obvious the rich are prospering by ripping off taxpayers as well as prospering off the financial tragedy of the bush people losing their farms. What can’t be denied is that the federal and state governments are well aware of this and are ducking and weaving avoiding the problem as their donors and individual MP’s are also profiting.
I published an article a few days ago about the drought and water frauds titled “Scott Morrison spends $1.13 billion on dams in the electorates of Barnaby Joyce and Angus Taylor who stole $80 million in the #Watergate scandal” and as soon as I had other questions were raised about who else has profited.
Gina Rinehart, who is very close to Barnaby Joyce, has been buying properties in Joyce’s New England electorate and would almost certainly benefit from the government spending $480 million for a dam at Dungowan in New England.
In a letter in 2011 Barnaby Joyce stuck his nose into Gina’s long-running battle with her children over their billion-dollar inheritances. John Hancock said publicly during the court case in 2015 “Coming from his government email I just think it’s extraordinary, and this character sits three chairs down from our Prime Minister.” (Click here to read more)
Gina has also recently financially benefited from Barnaby Joyce having an “epic fail” phone tower put on one of her properties in New England although Joyce claims he had no say in it which was contradicted by Telstra. So, Joyce, is Gina Rinehart’s gofer in New England and that’s how things roll where Joyce is. If you have big dollars Joyce will make sure you get what you want at the expense of taxpayers and people with less money and that’s what Barnaby Joyce has been doing for years for the big cotton farmers and their need for water.
Barnaby Joyce is not the only politician for sale in the bush as you can see below.
The Guardian reported on the 21/8/19:
A handful of big irrigators are responsible for 86% of water extracted from the Barwon-Darling river system, pushing the lower Darling into drought three years early, an expert report has found.
The NSW Natural Resources Commission released the report by the Australian Rivers Institute professor Fran Sheldon on Monday night, after it received criticism for the claim that extraction of water by cotton growers had pushed the river system into hydrological drought three years early.
Sheldon found that of the 158 licence holders in the Barwon-Darling, just 10 control 86% of the water extracted and four control 75%.
These four include the Harris family, which faces prosecution for extracting during low flows, and the publicly listed Webster Ltd.
The 2012 water-sharing rules have been highly contentious. Then water minister Katrina Hodgkinson made changes to rules after they had been put on public exhibition, following lobbying by the cotton industry.
This included changes to when irrigators could pump during low flow events and changes to the rules that allowed them to take up to 300% of their entitlement in one year. This has resulted in enormous volumes being extracted upstream during the drought. (Click here to read more)
ICAC investigating
In February 2018 it was reported that ICAC was investigating two NSW Liberal Party ministers:
A water-sharing plan for the Barwon-Darling was altered by the former New South Wales minister for primary industries, Katrina Hodgkinson, even though public consultations on the draft plan had ended and her bureaucrats had already submitted a draft for her to sign.
The changes made it more favourable to irrigators and delivered valuable additional water during low flows. According to some modelling it may have increased legal extractions by irrigators by 32%.
The formulation of the plan is now a major element of an investigation by the Independent Commission against Corruption, which is also looking into the NSW government’s handling of allegations of water theft and meter tampering in the region.
The inquiry is likely to examine the actions of two former NSW National party ministers: Hodgkinson, who retired from parliament in September last year, and Kevin Humphries who was dropped as junior water minister in 2015 but who remains the local member for the state seat of Barwon. (Click here to read more)
It was also reported in October 2017:
ICAC has begun a preliminary investigation into whether NSW public officials favoured Nationals donor and irrigator Peter Harris by not prosecuting him over alleged water theft.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is also investigating whether public officials made decisions in favour of western NSW irrigator and lobbyist Ian Cole by changing water-sharing arrangements to benefit him. (Click here to read more)
At this point, ICAC has taken no action that I know of but that might be more to do with the appointment of the Liberal Party friendly Peter Hall as ICAC Commissioner. The above is a good start to building a prima facie case that the federal politicians won’t act on the drought in regards to water theft because to do so would upset their cotton farming financial donors and it would also likely put some state and federal MP’s in jail.
Water theft has been a huge problem and well known for a long time. The ABC Four Corners broadcast a story in July 2017 titled “PUMP“. “People are profiteering… It’s the biggest water grab in Australia’s history.” said a Grazier. And we all know about Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor, with the help of Barnaby Joyce, stealing $80 million for the public selling water to the government that didn’t exist.
The Dungowan dam was announced with huge fanfare but they still don’t know what they are doing:
POLITICIANS won’t say whether the council or the state government will control the water captured in the new Dungowan Dam.
The Prime Minister and Premier made a flying visit to Tamworth at the weekend to announce the state and federal governments would jointly fund a new $480 million dam for the city.
The announcement was lauded by local leaders, but the Premier, mayor and state MP all dodged questions on who would manage the water potentially captured in the new dam.
Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson rejected claims the decision was rushed, while conceding there was “a lot of detail and a lot of planning still to come”. (Click here to read more)
If the politicians don’t know what they are doing in relation to key issues after they have already announced the building of the dam then what motivated them to make a rushed announcement. It looks like they have gotten together and decided that building the dam would make them money and keep them in power so they would announce it work out the details later.
The whole drought/water fraud and theft issue needs a Royal Commission solely focused on the crimes being committed by business people and politicians. This issue isn’t going anywhere and will get worse until the drought ends which could be a long way off.
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Categories: Angus Taylor, Barnaby Joyce, Gina Rinehart, Prime Minister Scott Morrison
Uhm … 1. I think there is a new member for Barwon after the 2019 NSW elections and it is NOT a representative of the National$.
2. There is already a Dungowan Dam east of Tamworth in the Nundle hills, see the structure in the background of your pic.
3. My advice is that Auntie Gina is buying grazing property west of Uralla, about 80 km north west of Tamworth. The Telstra tower is a nice little earner for Barnyard’s favourite financial patron.
4. I understand that the Barilaro property is in Braidwood, roughly east of Canberra and so about 500km south of Tamworth and the proposed Dungowan Dam.
5. The representative for the Nat$ in NorthernTablelands and also NSW Minister for Agriculture is currently facilitating the transfer of Armidale town drinking water to the Guyra Tomato Farm to grow tomatoes for export. The Malpas Dam located at Black Mountain between Guyra and Armidale was purpose built as the residential water supply for Armidale after the 1965 drought.
Local government politicians seeking future political favours with the nat$ have failed to seek a Force Majeur declaration from the NSW Courts to release Armidale Regional Council from any and all legal requirements to provide water to the Tomato Farm until the end of the drought.
Recent reports (October 2109) have Guyra town receiving about 400ML per day trucked from Armidale with the Tomato Farm getting about 780ML per day, all transport at NSW misgovernment expense. Armidale has been put on Level 5 water restrictions to provide sufficient water for the export tomatoes and profits for the foreign resident shareholders.
6. MaryAnne Slattery reported in the Guardian that NSW water legislation was re-written so that agriculture has priority of water supply over both town water and environmental flows.
7. For about 30 years it was reported that only private use dams were constructed with the generous assistance of public monies but no guarantee that the stored water would be available for users other than the developers.
New England Cocky is your name Tony Windsor?
the LNP have let Australian farmers down
Uhm … Gussy Grasslands assisted by Barnyard Joke sold water that did NOT exist to the Liarbral nat$ misgovernment for $80 MILLION were neither politician was held accountable by any government agency, nor required by Parliament to repay the taxpayer funds.
More information on how “Vote nat$ get screwed” is occurring in Australia, especially NW NSW is collected at FB page Armidale NSW Scandals: https://www.facebook.com/ArmidaleScandals/
(Ed – delete link if unacceptable.)
This is a national disgrace! The government is killing our farmers, literally. In my book, this is murder! Shame on you Scott Morrison, hiding behind religion. I don’t know how you sleep at night. I certainly have trouble. Message for you PM, what goes around, comes around. I sincerely hope it’s soon!
We need to stand up together
The government have no intention of helping the country.maybe in 20 years but the millions by then will be gone. Councils are as bad wasting the money on public toilets, music shows, etc, not anything for the farmers. They got rid of our manufacturing now our farmers.
Termites, White Ants.
White-anting is an Australian term for the process of internal erosion of a foundation. It is often used in reference to groups such as political parties or organisations where information from group insiders is ‘leaked’ or used to undermine the goals of the group.
Politicians are corrupt always have been always will be. We need to dissolve the Federation and start again. A complete cleanout is the only way. As will happen eventually.
Kevin Humphries MP Retired NSW. Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs 2008 TO 2011, Minister for Western NSW 2011 T0 2014, Minister for Natural Resources, Lands and Water, 2014 TO 2015, Member, Joint Standing Committee on Road Safety (Staysafe), 2017, Member, Joint Standing Committee on the Office of the Valuer-General, Deputy Chair 2017, Member, Committee on the Independent Commission Against Corruption 2015 to 2019.
In Australia we have three tiers (Not tears) of government. These three tiers allow conflict, dispute and self interest to take precedent over order and governance that cares for our communities and the well being of our families including the environment we live in. In Australia we have a climate crisis, there is no water to run our agricultural food bowl and we have no national policy to restore and care for the land. Trees are being ripped from the ground at an ever increasing rate, trees that are the mainstay of our ecological system, trees that interact with the local atmosphere and are a fundamental component of creating rain. We spend billions of dollars each year on a judicial structure that is inefficient, is adversarial in nature has absolutely zero accountability to the population who create, administer and interpret the useless laws that they create for the three levels of government so as the pursuit of the mighty dollar can continue at the expense of our children’s future.
The ostriches in Canberra need to pull their heads from wherever they are hidden and begin to do some serious work in developing a positive economic and environmentally sustainable plan for this nation before the bus fly’s over the cliff.
Your right Gazza they need to scrap the lot all the names ( lib nats labour etc and start again afresh! And above all they need to be made accountable
A big part of what allows politicians to go off in flights of fancy is that the average Australian voter has Bugger all knowledge OR interst in how their governments operate, OR in the application of their vote.
As to the water scandal Cotton and ( I think ) rice were never suited to grow here on standard availability of our water, BUT the big issue is all the crap with the Greens/ Labor and ‘ environmental flows’ .
Yep the whole thing is a disaster .
Very sad for the farmers.
Al49er
Northern Daily Leader has reports of NSW Government refusing requests to fund Dungowan dam extensions 3-4 years ago. Not a new project at all. It appears that visitors for the Country Music Festival (end January) are to be advised to bring their own water, and “some for the locals”.
It is not public knowledge in relation to the scams, theft, lies deceit, corruption, selfishness and illegal use of taxes for personal gain among almost every politician in the major political parties, and let these be titled conspiracies by the Greens, Liberals, Labor, National, also include local governments.
Included in the conspiracies are Australia’s judicial system and the media who rarely even publish snippets of the truth,which is, the general Australian public are ‘fodder-producing’ serfs, who blindly vote without evaluating the individuals within the / and the collusive political parties, due to their dispassion of politics and politicians.
Absolutely right on the money Jonde
Oh yes Gina ….Was it INSIDE INFORMATION regarding new dam at Dungowan to be built ?
Money + Government Corruption makes a select few rich at taxpayers expense
Seems Joyce is not crying POOR MOUTH any longer
We are following in the footsteps of other corrupt countries. WHY?
The reason we are following other corrupt countries is because the very entity that has been put in place to stop corruption, our judicial system is unaccountable, the so called regulator of this system is run by lawyers, that is it is a self regulating system that does not regulate and has therefore allowed the whole legal, judicial system to become corrupt. The mainstream press do not report this corruption which means it has been allowed to remain hidden from public scrutiny, the politicians support it and the families and communities of Australia are made to carry the burden.
NO Curious. Tony Windsor is the very fine politician who defeated the self-serving nat$ to be first elected as the Independent Member for Tamworth in the Greiner NSW COALition misgovernment and was promoted to Independent Member for New England in 2000 before health concerns within his family insisted that he retire in 2013.
This allowed Barnyard Joyce, who was rejected for re-election as a Senator for Queensland, to be elected by the Tamworth rednecks who were furious that Windsor had recognised the obvious dangers of a Abbott COALition misgovernment and instead sensibly supported the progressive policies of the Gillard Labor government.
At the 2016 elections, Tony and family were subjected to the most disgusting slander by the Tamworth nat$ election campaign that suggested marital impropriety by Tony at every opportunity, which was knowingly false. Indeed, the personal histories of some of the nat$ Campaign Committee were more accurately represented by these false accusations made in those television ads. Subsequently Barnyard Joyce confessed to adultery, dumped his family and ran off with a bit of Canberra fluff seeking a comfortable life on a politician’s retirement package.
Tony Windsor achieved much for his electorates and Australia that the nat$ have done everything possible to de-construct in pursuit of personal pecuniary interests while they build the worst third world export economy in the OECD.
Meanwhile the Australian voters in New England have seen that Tamworth women supporting adultery support nat$ while during this drought many rural voters have discovered that when you vote nat$ you get screwed.