Raybon Kan

the way to the bank! Whatever your philosophical beliefs about who owns clouds, or the sky, let’s not donate to corporations so they get to make the billions. Let’s make the billions ourselves!

We don’t have to be greenies. Let’s be greedies. Where’s the state-owned water-bottling company? Why aren’t we the country where the police drive Lamborghinis? Why aren’t we the country where nobody pays a cent of tax because we be rich, baby!

Water is the new gold. Water is the new oil. And it’s our dumb luck to have billions upon billions of litres of it. Let’s not spit in the face of luck. Luck works. Luck made Donald Trump rich, at birth. We’ve been rich this whole time. This is Antiques Roadshow, and we just found something valuable in the cellar.

Have you seen the world recently? Billionaires are buying New Zealand citizenship to avoid the apocalypse. High-decile, modern parts of the world don’t drink their tap water.

Smith said: What next, air? Well, there are laws governing airspace. Councils tell you how high you can build. Airlines take big detours around certain countries.

Our country, our rules. The Government just redefined “swimmable” as fresh water where the turds aren’t the size of legal snapper.

So let’s just declare that they — we — own underground water. You want it? Round these parts, we charge by the barrel.

You think the Saudis have a problem with owning the oil under their ground? Do they say: Nobody owns oil! Know what they don’t have? Water. Let’s see who gets thirsty first. And if there are anomalies, how about we discuss it over a leisurely breakfast, next time we’re all in the Caymans, or Klosters.

Once upon a time, nobody used to own land. Then the Government wrote some laws. Presto. Suddenly, there was private land, public land, zoning, fences, Bunnings, The Block, and, believe it or not, an entire market (some would say economy) based on it. Even banks got into the business.

So let’s get that law-writing app, and hit “enact”.

I’m not suggesting that individuals — decent humans like you and me — should pay. There’s personal use, and then there’s trafficking. And by all means let the bottling companies collect all the rainfall they want. Buy the land, set up lots of buckets. But if they want the good stuff, by the billilitre, from these huge, handy deposits underground, well: that’s different.

When it comes to water, caged costs more than free range.