CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Several employees of a prominent offshore banking service have today meet up for their annual post-weekend gasbag around a wildly expensive Cayman Islands water cooler, made up solely of brown gold from the Murray Darling water system.
This comes as former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is being pressed by media and political rivals to provide more answers over an $80 million taxpayer-funded water deal, after new revelations have found that it looks like it was about as corrupt as you can get.
In 2017, the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources bought 28 gigalitres of water from Eastern Australia Agriculture, a company once linked to now-Energy Minister Angus Taylor – and signed off on by then-water minister, Barnaby Joyce.
The deal was part of a series of controversial agreements which saw the Federal Government spend $200 million buying environmental water under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The buybacks occurred without an open tender process.
EAA is controlled by Eastern Australia Irrigation, which is based in the Cayman Islands.
Mr Taylor, a co-founder and director of Eastern Australia Irrigation, ended his association with the companies before entering Parliament in 2013.
Both he and Mr Joyce deny any involvement in this deal that they both have had clear involvement with.
However, back in the Carribbean, several procurers of international tax-avoidance are treating themselves to some delicious Murray-Darling water.
“How did this delicious regional Australian springwater even end up here?” asks one Caymans bank manager.
“It’s delicious, I can see why it is sold back to their farmers at such a corrupted mark up”
