SHEIL, Christopher

Running the risks : the rationalisation of Australia's water - Oxford : Blackwell Publishers Limited, September 2000

This article analyses the categories comprising the relationship between productivity and rate-on-return reporting in the context of water infrastructure. It examines the categories and relations comprising rates of return, showing how each can fail to capture real productivity gains. Theoretically, hight returns may be obtained despite low real productivity and vice versa. This has implications for `corporatisation', since the restructuring of Australia's water systems must break down. The issue is acute a neither the theory of corporatisation nor the logic of `economic rationalism' supplies a means for ensuring profitability does not outrun productivity. I conclude the rationalisation of Australia's water has exposed citizens to new, fundamental and otherwise unprotected social, environmental and economic risks