Murray-Darling basin

The period since the Murray-Darling Basin Authority released its guide to the proposed plan, nearly two years ago, has been marked by sustained outrage from all quarters.

The Murray-Darling Debacle

The ongoing flooding in the Murray-Darling Basin, coming so soon after the decade-long 'Millennium Drought', is a stark reminder of the extreme variability of the Murray-Darling river system.

These events also illustrate why the proposed Basin Plan, predicated on allocating a fixed volume of water for irrigation and returning a fixed volume of water to the rivers, has been widely condemned as facile and insincere, and of failing to improve on the existing, discredited management regime.

The period since the Murray-Darling Basin Authority released its guide to the proposed plan, nearly two years ago, has been marked by sustained outrage from all quarters. The authority, under its current chair, political apparatchik Craig Knowles, has been accused of a lack of transparency and of scientific dishonesty.

Australia uses huge volumes of water to produce products for export, but cannot find enough water to keep its river systems alive.

The driest inhabited continent on earth - also the world’s biggest water exporter!

While the Murray-Darling Basin Authority apparently struggles to find even a paltry 3,000 gigalitres of water in its increasingly compromised attempt to restore the nation’s most vital and productive river system, a new report[1] reveals Australia to be the world’s largest net exporter of virtual water. This water is exported in crop, livestock and industrial products. It is the water consumed to create produce for export.

Independent data cited in the Canadian paper. It does not pertain to the time of the Australian drought.

The report also indicates that our agricultural sector is responsible for the vast majority of the total volume of water exported from Australia in this way, shipping an average of 72,000 gigalitres of virtual water overseas every year.

The Keneally Government of NSW announces it will protect 107,000 hectares of Riverina redgums and set up an $80 million support package with logging to be wound down over the next five years.

But after five years the loggers would have done their redgum raping and pillaging, so seriously what forest will be left worth protecting? Keneally offers falsehood, not commitment.

Proclaims Keneally: "I've asked the people of NSW to judge me on what I do and the services I deliver." [Paul Bibby interview, Sun-Herald, 'Public Service with a Smile', 21-Feb-2010, pp. 14-15]

Keneally, in her beguilled naivety, professes to her electorate"Every night when I go to bed I think over how the day has gone, what we've accomplished, what I want to do tomorrow. It's a constant process, testing myself against the standards that I've set for myself and the standards that the people of NSW have for government."

But Keneally should be judged on her treatment of the old growth native forests of the NSW Riverina and NSW South Coast, which she is allowing be raped for railway sleepers and woodchips.

On Wednesday 20 January, South Australian State Independent MP David Winderlich is organising a massive protest outside a scheduled Federal Cabinet meeting to demand effective action to save the Murray-Darling. The recent inundations of the northern headwaters give this Government a rare opportunity to save the our dying river system, that is, if it has the political will to stand up to commercial interests who would, instead, divert this much-needed water for their own short-term gain.

The following has been sent to me from David Winderlich's office. It was originally published on David Winderlich's web site at davidwinderlich.com. - JS

To his credit, NSW Premier, Nathan Rees in the days preceding the 4th December 2009 (his ousting as Premier) announced the creation of a massive new red gum national park along the Murray River near Deniliquin to protect much of the state's remaining river red gum forests from logging.

Loggers have complained because all the 300 year old trees they chainsawed have gone but won't magically grow back, so they want more old red gums trees to chainsaw 'to feed their families' and to 'keep their jobs' and to preserve their 'tight-knit communities' which depend on logging... just like in the 1800s when similar 'tight-knit communities' in Hobart and Albany depended on whaling.

Someone enlightened should play them a DVD on Easter Island's history.

Tune in

Dr Douglas has a grasp on the broader politics and bureaucracy problems which are making it impossible for the governments involved in regulating water (i.e. all Australian governments) to act effectively on the issue. When I say 'effectively', I mean to say that they simply seem to be paralysed and allowing things to drift into ever greater crisis. They are not paralysed on the privatisation issue; they appear to be enthralled by the privateers, but they are paralysed on taking the necessary measures to safeguard Australian water sources. They need the public to keep up a huge pressure because only public pressure will wake these bureaucratic government sleepwalkers, who will take Australia beyond survival mode if they are not woken up.

See other articles on this issue from Fair Water Use here: http://candobetter.org/taxonomy/term/619.

The message coming from Fair Water Use Australia is that the Federal and State Governments are not handling Australia's water properly, transparently or effectively. The mishandling is causing a dangerous crisis. The public should be very concerned and NGOs should support Fair Water Use and the UN in their call for a state of emergency and a Royal Commission. Australia, this is really serious.

Higher rainfall should mean more water - so where is it going?

Higher rainfall should mean more water in public and environmental reserves, but it is going to private holdings instead and the public is not aware

Private sector increases its strangle-hold on the Murray-Darling

Data obtained by Fair Water Use from the Bureau of Meteorology and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority provides confirmation of the effect of the rapid increase in privately-held water in the Darling Basin on the volumes of water available for essential public and environmental use, refuting claims that the crisis in the Darling is predominantly drought-related.

image from Fair Water Use site http://www.fairwateruse.com.au/

Distilled is the monthly newsletter produced by the National Water Commission, the government-appointed national body ostensibly responsible for "driving progress towards the sustainable management and use of Australia's water resources" - a gloriously vacuous aspiration, even by institutional standards. An extract from the current issue is revealing:

"Stakeholders urge more action on water reform:

Water industry stakeholders have urged the Commission to continue to fearlessly identify areas where further and faster reforms are needed to get water reform "back on track". The Commission's stakeholder forum has underscored the importance of collaboration as part of a renewed commitment to national water reform by all governments, industry partners and private sector stakeholders."

Water privatisation agenda dominates 'commission'

Cursory inspection of the membership of the National Water Commission's 2009 Stakeholder Forum reveals a clear predominance of groups, governmental and private, which, behind the scenes, are passionately pushing the water-privatisation agenda.

Australian citizens excluded from representation on Commission

Moreover, notable by their absence in the extensive list of entities considered to be worthy of forum membership are groups representing Australian citizens, or customers - the term most of the members would no doubt prefer to use.

This book paints a picture of the ecological mechanics of this continent, using clear, concise prose. It is a painlessly educative book. The bold claim of its subtitle, "How Australia's landscape can be saved," stands up to scrutiny.

Take a new look at thistles, dock plants and other hardy weeds. Enjoy trialling the author's theories in your neglected front garden or replot your broadacre farm. Re-examine the cause of total re-nativisation in the light of galloping desertification. Peter maintains that his simple hydrological theory holds true for the entire continent. He re-interprets the history of this land; he may well be right.

Media release: 3rd November 2008

Not long ago it could be argued that the just-approved, multi-million dollar, riverside development at Mannum in South Australia's Murraylands would be a welcome initiative; the 570 new residential allotments and 150-berth houseboat marina providing a much-needed economic boost for that regional community.

However, that was in the good old bad old days. Now even the most unobservant Australian can see all too clearly the widespread effects of our overexploitation of the Murray-Darling river system.

Irrespective of all the talk, as a nation we are little closer to implementing a mechanism which will urgently address the underling non-drought causes of the widespread degradation of this nation's vital river system and heal the ecological wounds we have inflicted.

It bears remembering that, as you read this, the River Murray is not flowing to its mouth, vast areas of its natural wetland lie disconnected and in decay, some river communities are similarly unplugged from their water supply and several existing marinas in the Lower Lakes are largely high and dry. The river system, on which millions of Australians depend, is struggling - big time.

Greed and stupidity, undiluted

At the conclusion of the program, any independent observer of the Four Corners report, aired by our national broadcaster last night, 20 October, would have risen somewhat unsteadily from the couch, staggered by the degree of ignorance and/or greed displayed by many of those at the heart of the Murray-Darling crisis: politicians and water-users alike.

We are now at the mercy of Queensland's water minister

The future for the Darling itself can only be grim as long as the apparently myopic Queensland Minister for Natural Resources and Water continues with the Queensland Government’s hasty application of absurd dollar-values to water licences virtually donated to their agribusiness cronies, including previous parliamentary colleagues, not so very long ago; valuations curiously based, not on projected volumes of available water, but on the size of the dams constructed, and still being built, by these agribusinesses and other water-speculators, anywhere where the natural flow of surface-water can be impeded.

Media release: 17th October 2008 by Dr Ian Douglas: Coordinator, Fair Water Use

As soon as the laws of financial karma came into play internationally, once fiercely-independent, red-neck trading, banking institutions wasted little time in sidling up to global treasuries, cap in hand, seeking charity - and forgiveness for their previous irresponsible activities. As we all know, the cost of such clemency will be borne by the tax-paying public.

One can reasonably accuse many groups and individuals invested in Murray-Darling water of the same maverick use of resources, as they extract tomorrow's water from the Basin, apparently ignoring warnings that ever-increasing levels of extractions are unsustainable, and happy to leave it to the Federal Government to attempt to buy its way out of the water crisis with public funds. We continue to hear their glib assertions that, as they are acting within the laws of the land, it is unfair to describe them as water-barons or ecological pariahs.

The Cubbie Group, which can effectively divert the Culgoa River into its vast network of irrigation channels, frequently responds to criticism of its practices by reiterating that its activities are entirely legal, implying that Australians should therefore not be concerned about the environmental impacts and the indirect export of vast volumes of Murray-Darling water.

Media Release: 13th October 2008

The rejection of the findings of the Senate Enquiry into the Coorong and the Lower Lakes and the issuing of an alternate minority report_#main-fn1">1 by the #appendix2">well-intentioned senators who called for the enquiry is further confirmation that the Murray-Darling crisis cannot be resolved by parliamentary process alone.

Ian Douglas of Fair Water Use (www.fairwateruse.com.au) shows how the 'reform', commencing in 1994, which promised to rectify the Murray-Darling's chaotic piecemeal water management structure by making water allocations a marketable commodity separate from the land titles, has, instead, only help bring the Murray-Darling system to the brink of collapse . In accord with our national constitution's provisions for such national crises, he calls for the declaration of a state of emergency.

Originally published with readers' comments on the ABC News web site on 16 Sep 08 08:48:00

By Ian H Douglas

Originally published on the ABC News web site on 16 Sep 08 08:48:00

A lose, lose, win project (or Spinning water away from irrigators and the environment)

Plug the Pipe Media release of 18 September, 2008

The Foodbowl Unlimited Group (FUG), the Victorian Premier and Water Minister have all consistently said that the North South pipeline was a win, win, win project. Irrigators, the Environment and Melbourne would all have extra water.

When the FUG offered Melbourne Water and the Victorian Government the rights to 75 billion litres of water for $300 million they guaranteed them that 75 billion litres in the first year even though they were aware that the savings would not be achieved at that stage.

The title previously was: Mother Nature: dig out your begging-bowl - dem cotton farmers is coming yo' way

Not content with being a major contributor to the desiccation of creeks and rivers in the Murray-Darling and to the increased salinity of the system, in the midst of the nation’s worst water crisis the cotton industry is intending to increase its use of groundwater, as this is more cost-effective than purchasing impounded surface water at current prices.

NSW Cotton growers too thirsty

Fair Water Use has been informed that twelve Southern NSW cotton growers will tap the already compromised ground-water reserves of the Basin to irrigate 2500 hectares of cotton this season. At an average irrigation rate of 6.3 megalitres per hectare (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2005-06), this equates to an additional 15,750 megalitres extracted from stressed local aquifers and, to all intents and purposes, exported.

CSIRO identifies groundwater drawdown as major threat

In a recent publication “The shared water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin”, the CSIRO identified one of the most serious threats to the future of the Basin as the rapid increase in groundwater extraction. CSIRO scientist, Dr Tom Hatton, has also pointed out the stupidity of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, as groundwater extractions exacerbate the widespread impacts of the endemic overuse of surface water.

Media Release: 4 September 2008

Murray-Darling chaos: the final straw

National coordinator of Fair Water Use (Australia), Dr Ian Douglas has responded to today's statement by the Federal Water Minister that the commonwealth is not in a position to purchase major irrigating agribusiness enterprise, Darling Farms, in the absence of support from the State Government of NSW.

"It merely confirms what has become increasingly clear to Australians over recent months: that current arrangements with respect to the governance and administration of the Murray-Darling Basin are dysfunctional and self-defeating, and are clearly failing to maintain this vital river system for the benefit of us all", Dr Douglas said.

Twelve months ago, John Corboy, co-convenor of Foodbowl Unlimited (www.foodbowl.com.au), ex-Chairman of SPC and strong proponent of the Victoria’s north-south pipeline, went on record as stating that the future for agriculture in the Goulburn Valley was “not all gloom and doom” as Australian farmers stand to benefit from the impact of two ecological time-bombs: the impending collapse of the largely ground-water irrigated agricultural sector in Northern China, home to around half of the country’s population of 1.3 billion, and the ever-worsening degradation and pollution of river systems in India and China.

In his speech to the Foodbowl Unlimited forum in September 2007, Mr Corboy also welcomed the reduction of global agricultural output as a result of increased biofuel production, saying this will “bring supply and demand into balance”. He indicated that by 2040 there would be 3 billion more mouths to feed on this planet and urged that agribusiness take “full advantage” of such opportunities: a degree of economic rationalism that would be hard to surpass.