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It is 2026 and a Chinese owned company holds a licence to extract 96 million litres of groundwater a year from drought ravaged Queensland farmland. A licence that runs until the year 2111. And now they want more.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not fearmongering. This is what happened in Elbow Valley on Queensland's Southern Downs, and it is one of the most outrageous failures of Australian Labor governance you have probably never heard of. Until now.
The Land, The Farmers, The Water
Ben Usher and Peter Kio are the kind of Australians this country was built on. Ben farms the land with a simple philosophy: "You've got to treat it right if you want it to be there for tomorrow. You've got to love it really. Your country, your animals, you've got to love them more than yourself."
Peter is a fourth generation farmer. His family has worked the same land since the 1860s. His grandchildren will be the sixth generation.
These farmers know drought. They have battled bushfires and bone dry seasons their entire lives. But nothing prepared them for 2020, when the nearby town of Stanthorpe ran completely dry, relying solely on water trucked in from Warwick. Residents were placed on emergency water restrictions of just 80 litres a day. Water theft became so common it made headlines.
"Never never never this bad," Ben said at the time. "It's been dry before, but never the water as bad as what it is."
And right in the middle of all of that, a foreign company was handed permission to take their water.
Footage courtesy of A Current Affair, Channel 9, February 2026. Drought-ravaged farmers from a regional Queensland town are fighting foreign investors trying to take water from their land.
Who Is Joyful View?
In 2006, a Chinese owned company called Joyful View Garden Real Estate Development Resort Pty Ltd, owned by brothers Wenxing and Wenwei Ma, purchased Cherrabah Resort, a 5,000 acre bush retreat in Elbow Valley.
They arrived with big promises. A new town would be built. Jobs would follow. On the strength of that promise, the Queensland State Government in 2008 issued Joyful View a water extraction licence. That licence was then extended in 2016 to allow the company to pump 96 million litres a year from the aquifer until the year 2111. That is 92 years of extraction rights, handed to a foreign company, based on a development that was never built.
The proposed town never happened. The luxury resort plans were quietly shelved in 2016 after planning and environmental difficulties, including concerns about a local population of spotted tail quolls. But the water licence remained.
The Drought Deal That Shocked a Community
In December 2019, at the absolute peak of the drought crisis, while Stanthorpe was weeks away from running out of drinking water entirely, the Southern Downs Regional Council approved a new development application from Joyful View to extract the water and truck it to a bottling plant on the Gold Coast for commercial distribution.
The day after the council approved the application, they implemented extreme water restrictions for residents of Warwick and Stanthorpe.
Local councillors who voted in favour said they had no power to regulate groundwater extraction, arguing it was a state responsibility. So they approved it anyway.
"It was pretty unbelievable that it happened," one local said.
When Joyful View did some test pumping in 2019, local springs dropped or ceased running entirely. The impact was immediate and measurable.
The full extraction allocation was never taken. But the licence remained active. And now the Mah brothers are back with much bigger plans.
The Expansion That Has Locals at Breaking Point
Joyful View has now lodged plans to dramatically expand its operations. The proposal includes a warehouse style facility roughly the size of a football field, around 7,000 square metres, built to bottle, store and export the water.
Most likely out of the country entirely.
The scale of the expansion has stunned local landholders. Craig Doro, who will be forced to drive past the proposed factory every day, has outlined what he believes will be catastrophic consequences. The roads in the area are already crumbling and not fit to carry the heavy vehicle traffic the facility would generate. Sections of road earmarked for upgrade will receive attention, but other crumbling portions will not, despite the enormous increase in trucks.
"Standing over the top of a culvert and both sides of the road there's cracks in it. Two or three big B doubles over the top of this and it will all fall in. They don't have to put up any bond. Who's going to have to pay to fix them? We are."
There is also the matter of 56 endangered species on the site. "What are they going to drink?" one local asked.
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Three Levels of Government Failed These Farmers
This disaster did not happen overnight. It was enabled step by step by failures at every level of government, and both major parties have a case to answer.
Queensland Labor (2008) issued the original water extraction licence based on a development promise that was never fulfilled. No enforcement conditions. No follow up. No accountability when the promised town never materialised.
Queensland Liberal National Party (2012 to 2015) held state government power for three years and did nothing to review or revoke the licence despite the development remaining unbuilt.
Queensland Labor again (2016) then extended the same licence to run until the year 2111. Ninety two years of extraction rights, locked in, based on a promise that had been broken for a decade.
The Southern Downs Regional Council (2019) approved the commercial water extraction and trucking operation in the middle of an active community water crisis, the day before implementing emergency water restrictions on their own residents. Councillors said groundwater regulation was a state responsibility and approved it anyway.
The current Queensland Liberal National Party Government is now pointing the finger squarely at the previous Labor government while taking no action of its own. The water minister has deflected. Council refuses to comment. Joyful View did not respond to A Current Affair's requests for comment.
The uncomfortable truth is that this is not a Labor problem or an LNP problem. It is an 18 year bipartisan failure. Both parties had the power to act and neither did.
Meanwhile the licence to pump 96 million litres a year sits untouched, valid until 2111, and the expansion plans move forward.
Is There Any Solution in Sight?
Honestly, right now the outlook is not good.
The current state government has the power to revoke or review the water licence. Locals are calling on the LNP government loudly and clearly to "pull this licence in, review it, revoke it." But there has been no commitment to do so.
The Southern Downs Regional Council still has the expansion development application to assess. A council decision is looming and locals are watching closely.
What is clear is that this cannot be fixed at the local level alone. The only real solutions require state government action:
Revoke or review the water licence on the grounds that the original development it was issued for was never built.
Reform Queensland's water licensing laws to prevent licences being issued on the basis of development promises without enforcement conditions.
Introduce foreign ownership restrictions on water rights, similar to what the Nationals are now proposing for farmland nationally.
Mandate community consultation before any commercial groundwater extraction licence is approved or extended in drought prone areas.
Who Is Actually Calling This Out?
While the two major parties have spent 18 years passing the blame back and forth, One Nation has put a clear water policy on the table that speaks directly to situations like this one.
Their platform explicitly opposes water trading or extraction by entities with no land and no farming use for the water, describing these entities as treating water as "a commodity" rather than a resource. They are calling for foreign ownership of water rights to be restricted outright, and for a public registry of all water ownership and transactions in Australia so communities can actually see who holds licences and how much they are extracting.
One Nation also specifically names the Great Artesian Basin, which covers Queensland, NSW, South Australia and the Northern Territory, as one of Australia's most critical water sources requiring protection.
On this issue at least, their stated position aligns with what Elbow Valley locals are demanding: no more foreign entities extracting and exporting groundwater from drought prone communities while farmers and residents go without.
Whether or not you vote for them, the policy framework they are proposing is worth knowing about. Because right now, it is one of the few political positions in Australia that directly addresses what is happening in Stanthorpe.
Why Every Australian Should Care About This
This is not just a Queensland story. It is a test case for the entire country.
Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Our groundwater is not a commodity. It is the lifeblood of our food system, our farming communities, our ecosystems and ultimately our own survival.
When a foreign company can hold a 92 year licence to extract millions of litres from a drought stricken community, based on a development promise that was never honoured, something is catastrophically broken in how we manage and protect our most precious resource.
As one local put it: "There's only one winner and that's the overseas investors. I think Australia's got to wake up. This is the test case. This is the precedent."
He is right.
We as Australians need to decide what our water is worth. And right now the answer, shamefully, appears to be: whatever a foreign company is willing to pay for a licence.
At BioHax we believe clean water, clean food and sovereign land management are the foundations of genuine wellness. Stories like this are why we cover more than supplements and biohacks. If this story made you angry, share it. The more Australians who know, the harder it becomes to ignore.
Sources: A Current Affair (Channel 9, February 2026), Change.org community submissions (2019), Queensland Government water licensing records, Southern Downs Regional Council documents.
