The recent history of irrigation is more complex, and differs among the states and within states. Unlike Victoria, New South Wales privatised its water distribution agency at the community level during the 1990s. The farmers were, according to parliamentary statements, keen to take over the provision of irrigation water at the local or regional level. ‘The irrigators are eager to be handed the task of privatisation’ (Member for Murray, in Parliament of New South Wales 1993). An interesting example of community involvement in the process is that of Coleambally Irrigation Co-Operative Limited (CICL), which took over from what was once the NSW Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission (from 1976, the Water Resources Commission) in 2000. All 373 of the cooperative’s customers are also members (Meyer 2005:116). In the same year that the cooperative was corporatised (1997), the future membership was facing uncertainties of water supply and pricing as the state government discussed capping the quantities of water that could be diverted, issues that had been on the political agenda for several years (Parliament of New South Wales 1997). Water conservation measures were required of the privatised entities and were funded by the NSW Government (with respect to Murray Irrigation Limited, see Meyer 2005:105). In drought conditions, however, on top of environmental concerns and infrastructure problems, the management of water provision has been difficult.

This is especially so for locally or regionally based organisations that are required to manage state policy. It is reasonable to ask about the extent to which local people, including cooperative members, are able to interpret and act on their own interests. Just what privatisation and localisation/regionalisation have meant to farmers and other local people should be questioned. An anecdote of potential interest has been provided by an anthropologist working among irrigation farmers in an area managed by a cooperative (A. Brown, personal communication). In conversations about water and its management during some research on the values and interests of irrigation farmers, a privatised irrigation organisation was consistently referred to as ‘the commission’, being a reference to the Water Resources Commission, which had ceased to exist in 1986. ‘The commission’ was seen to have been an authoritarian, almost foreign, organisation. It did, as the privatised entities must still do, police the use of water. This raises the possibility that after the irrigation provider has been transferred to local ownership, though not entirely local control, it is seen to remain unchanged. It is reasonable to propose that the idea of local control is foreign to the irrigation farmer’s world view. While grain handling indicates the legitimacy of the regionalisation of industry functions and the ease with which the ideas of privatisation and farmer control fit into the rural world view, government functions might not be so easily reconceptualised in regionalist terms.