Imagine Noah’s ark happened not 4000 years in ago Turkey, but in 40 years time in Australia.

God appears in a vision to a local lad named Plugger to warn him it’s time to gather up the animals. Thanks to global warming, El Nino and a touch of divine intervention, bucket loads of rain are heading his way.

Plugger starts work on his ark and it rains for forty days and forty nights. He dutifully heards the bandicoots, kookaburras, brown snakes, dung beetles and all the rest up the gang plank.

The rain stops but the water rises for another 100 days and at last Plugger’s ark is ready to set sail. A luxury motor yacht appears over the horizon and foams to a halt next to his ark.

“I’m afraid you can’t use this water,” says a seriously suited chap holding aloft a piece of paper. “This water belongs to the Wordwide Aquagression Corporation.”

“Wadda ya mean?” yells Plugger. “This water came from God. It fell from the sky.”

“I don’t care where it came from,” says the suit man. “I have here a legally enforcible document to prove that we own the water entitlement on all this land.”

“If you want to save all of creation from God’s wrath, that’s fine with us, we’re reasonable business people, but it’s going to cost you.”

Plugger’s problems actually started 40 years earlier. No parable; it’s in the papers right now.

Farmers are selling water rights and the government is not the only buyer. Multi-national corporations are buying the rights to Australia’s water because the smart cookies are spruiking ‘blue gold’.

Water has no commercial competition. Nothing else can do its job and as an investment it is unbeatable. And for the same reason it’s unbelievable that we’d let this happen.

While Australia drifts about in a policy vacuum, waiting to see which party will form the least courageous government in our history, investors are buying the farm from beneath our feet.

Our coal, iron ore, large pastural properties, agri-businesses and now even water, the elixir of life, are up for grabs to the highest bidder. The whole country is now regarded as a gilt-edged superannuation investment for international capital.

All we have to do is to buy that new 3-D telly with the scraps they can easily afford to pay us and then just stay out of the way.