WHAT we've got here, as the jail warden famously said to Paul Newman in the film Cool Hand Luke, is failure to communicate.
The message, it seems, is just not getting through. Perhaps we’re just too stupid to understand it but Allconnex Water chief executive Kim Wood is doing his best to educate us.
He announced last week that Queenslanders had been getting their water too cheaply for too long.
They should, he intimated, stop whining about ever-increasing water bills because before too long, they’d really have something to whinge about because they were going to get well and truly shafted by companies like his.
Actually, he eschewed the vernacular and said we should get ready to pay much more, which amounts to the same.
"Most of us think the water falls from the sky and is free," he said.
I confess to being one of those who still believes, naive simpleton that I am, that, while not completely gratis, water should be one of our more affordable commodities, central as it is to the maintenance of life.
This makes me one of those people who frustrate people such as Wood, who believes that it should be collected and sold for as high a price as can be screwed out of ratepayers.
If you find it difficult to pay spiralling water bills, sent to you from one of the companies that, thanks to the State Government, now control water in the state, then it really is too bad. You’ve had it too good for too long and if you don’t like it, then go stand outside with a bucket next time it rains.
As an example of executive arrogance, Wood’s stance is one of the better ones, his attitude up there with "let them eat cake" – the difference being that while there is no evidence Marie Antoinette ever urged the starving masses to have a nice slice of sponge, Wood’s stance is a matter of record.
He is, of course, better placed than most to pay his water bill, pulling down a handy $464,000 a year in total or a tad under $1800 a day for a five-day week.
Despite Wood’s exhortations to cop it sweet, I still have trouble understanding how the State Government’s "reform" of water supply has seen bills rise by $300 a year. These are increases which, thanks to Wood, we know will continue and compound further in the short, let alone the medium, term with the best bet being a further rise of 22 per cent in the pipeline, so to speak, next year.
It will surprise no one to hear that having created massive water distribution bureaucracies, with Wood spending $4 million fitting out his offices and planning to lift his staff by a further 100 to 900, the State Government has announced the ensuing price gouging is not its fault.
Adopting her stern look, Premier Anna Bligh has said that it’s all the fault of those dreadful regional councils. Are these the ones which were forced to amalgamate by the State Government and then forced to take control of the new water utilities?
Yes, they are the same ones and Bligh has said she’ll give them all a jolly good spanking if she finds out that they, through the utilities they now own, have been charging too much for water.
The councils blame the Government for foisting the hugely expensive system upon them, while Wood defends his stance by saying that this year he expects to make a profit of about $70 million selling the stuff that, as he says, most of us mistakenly think falls from the sky and is free.
He has, therefore, justified his considerable salary. were he able to extract $100 million in 2012 – and given the fact that he’ll probably raise charges by about a fifth this seems likely – then he may well be in line for a salary increase based on the improved financial performance of the company he runs.
That rattle you can hear isn’t rain on the roof but another State Government-sponsored gravy train leaving the station.
On board are all the managers and consultants, some mates of mates, some professional desk-dwellers, who have done very nicely out of bureaucracies such as the Water Commission and can now mine the rich salary seams of the water utilities.
Standing on the station platform are the ratepayers, watching as the water mandarins wave and smile from their first-class seats.
Peering through the window of the carriages, they can see a game in progress. it involves a ball emblazoned with the word BLAME and it is being tossed from the State Government to the councils and on to the water retailers who pass it the councils who then flick it back to the Government.
What is certain is that a lot of money is now being made from water and that no one appears to have responsibility for the havoc that is being visited upon household budgets.
The one group not benefiting from this bonanza, of course, are the people who are funding it: the ratepayers.
Wood’s attitude may be unfortunate and he may wish that he had not said last week that it was "regrettable" that it had rained as this had a negative impact on Allconnex’s revenue, but he didn’t create the system.
That was all the handiwork of our elected leaders, the same ones who are now playing handball. it may well be that the electorate will tire of trying to work out who is at fault, blame both the councillors and the state parliamentarians, and seek vengeance on both at the ballot box.
oconnorm@qnp.newsltd.com.au
<a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/plumb-depths-of-water-cost/story-e6freqmx-1226016790946tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/plumb-depths-of-water-cost/story-e6freqmx-1226016790946Sun, 06 Mar 2011 14:27:45 GMT 00:00″>Water's not free so take a hike
Hyderabad, Mar 20:
TIME: 02:45 P.M. EST
