VICTORIAN Water Minister Tim Holding has refused to regulate water brokers, despite irrigators' concerns.

His refusal is based on there being "very few formal complaints" about brokers.

But it's a naive argument given the current global financial crisis.

Is Mr Holding going to wait until a couple of brokers go broke and irrigators' money goes missing?

Doesn't he understand the failure to adequately regulate the global financial sector is one of the key reasons for the current crisis?

At a local level, governments long ago realised the need to regulate industry sectors that handled other people's money.

Past state governments introduced and have updated regulations on real estate agents' and solicitors' commissions, trust accounts and earnings.

But water brokers seemed to have slipped under the radar.

Yet these water brokers are handling large sums of irrigators's money on trades worth $1.4 billion last season, across the southern Murray Darling Basin.

That's an enormous sum of money flowing through accounts managed by brokers who require no formal qualifications or registration and screening.

The Minister should be concerned at the fact that anyone can hang up a shingle and call themselves a water broker.

Water brokers not only handle large sums of money, they also give financial advice.

When an irrigator rings a broker, they ask three questions:
• How much is water trading for?
• Is the price going up or down?
• Should I buy/sell now or wait?

How can any broker charge a commission and give advice to both the buyer and seller on a transaction?

It creates an obvious conflict of interest.

The Weekly Times also struggles to understand why some brokers are so unwilling to reveal their fees and commissions on a standard trade.

If brokers believed in transparency they would willingly reveal their fees and commissions.

Irrigators need transparency and they need confidence in the marketplace, given the enormous commissions they are paying to many brokers.

But sadly it seems Mr Holding is not going to help create a more transparent and professional water market.

We will all have to wait until one of the cowboys of the water market falls over before the Minister or any of his interstate colleagues act.