Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 2 March. Top storiesOne of Australia’s largest cotton companies reaped a $52m windfall in the sale of water rights to federal government. Documents released to the Senate show Eastern Australia Agriculture sold its overland water rights to the federal government in July last year for $79m, and then booked a $52m gain on the sale. The documents included valuations by Colliers International, which were used by the Department of Agriculture to price the water from EAA. In one unredacted comment, Colliers warned “there is no true market” for overland flows – the type of water rights the federal government was proposing to purchase – and that “trading was limited to sales only to the commonwealth”.

Source: The Guardian March 01, 2018 19:30 UTC