Time for Wong to come clean on the Coorong
|
It’s time for Penny Wong to start showing some ticker and greater transparency about the Coorong and Lower Lakes. Yesterday she appeared to throw in the towel, declaring that there’s insufficient water in the Murray-Darling to save the lakes and the lower Murray. There are plenty of experts who disagree with her. But in the absence of a proper audit of the available water resources, we have no idea who is right. The stakes are too high for this sort of uncertainty. Both the Liberals and the Greens have demanded an audit to establish whether the 450-500 GL of water necessary to stave off the immediate threat to the Coorong and Lower Lakes is available upstream. The Australian Conservation Foundation believes there is definitely enough water. What’s lacking is the political will – not just from Wong, but from the Queensland, NSW and Victoria Governments. According to a study by the ACF’s Dr Arlene Buchan, the 500 GL required by December to prevent irreparable damage to the lakes can be obtained from upstream – much of it from the Menindee Lakes. There are currently 550 GL of water in the Menindee Lakes – below the level (640GL) at which control of the lakes is taken over by the Murray Darling Basin Commission from the NSW Government. There are persistent allegations from across the political spectrum that the NSW Government is managing the lake’s inflows and outflows to keep it below the MDBC threshold. There is also deep scepticism that the water is “fully committed to human needs” as maintained by NSW Water Minister Nathan Rees. Water from Menindee would provide a substantial contribution to saving the Coorong, and could be replenished from water further upstream. There are at least 1700 GL of water held in storages in northern NSW from heavy rain last year and earlier this year. The ACF also suggests water loans - if there is no political will to pursue compulsory acquisition of water rights, compulsory loans, with rights reverting to owners once the crisis in the Lower Murray has passed, should be considered, as should more purchases of properties. Purchasing or long-term leasing of properties provides an additional benefit of assisting farmers and irrigators who want to exit the industry, and who would not be able to do so merely by selling water entitlements. There are a number of major properties that are on the market now and have both significant water rights and large storages of water available for release. What about evaporation and water loss, which would defeat the purpose of buying water a long way upriver? This is another area where we are acting in an information vacuum. But it’s known that releasing a large amount of water at once, in winter/spring, will minimise evaporation. A recent estimate by CSIRO scientist Bill Young was that up to 50% of water released from Menindee would reach the lower Murray. The information vacuum doesn’t just apply to efforts to save the Coorong and Lower Lakes. South Australian senator Simon Birmingham points out that plans to save the Lakes by letting the sea in and building a weir across the Murray are being prepared without any consideration of the environmental impacts of the inundation, both on the Lakes themselves or upriver due to salinity. Birmingham says he doesn’t know whether there is enough water in the system to save the lakes but he is suspicious about the NSW Government’s gaming of the Menindee Lakes requirements, and wants a full audit of available water resources done as quickly as possible. The Greens’ new South Australian Senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, has made the same call. As Greg Hunt reminded us today with his somewhat unfortunate comparison of Wong with Saddam Hussein, Australia has international obligations in relation to the Coorong. The consequences of the failure of Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd to take on the states at COAG earlier this year are now also emerging. Crikey has been told the annual 4% trading cap has already been reached on the Campaspe River in central Victoria, which flows into the Murray, and a major water acquisition has been rejected because it will breach the cap – barely a month into the financial year. Victoria’s intransigence on this issue is now directly exacerbating the crisis in South Australia. Wong needs to urgently reveal, or commission the MDBC to produce, a comprehensive water audit that will allow us to see the basis on which she appears to have given up on the lower Murray. She also needs to confront the NSW Government and get it to come clean on exactly what is going on with the water at Menindee, and put serious pressure on the Victorian Government to give up its irrigator-inspired obsession with the 4% cap. It’s time for her to start living up to the big reputation she’s somehow earned during her short stint as minister. |
|
|
|
21 Comments
Venise I think you’ve just been put on a list somewhere starting with A and ending in O. Suffice to say we greenies don’t talk like that.
I just wanted to add a very depressing comment to balance Keane pearler about Iraq above. That was f*cking funny BK.
So the depressing bit: agri industry along the Murray River doesn’t vote Labor. That’s it. That’s why. They could but they won’t, they want it to die because the National Party will die with it. But you will never hear ALP machine pollies say it out loud. They will wring and wash their hands, even Premier of South Australia for God sake is running interference on their own green branded ACF for daring to suggest a solution that’s real - that’s a surprise, fancy calling these greenies phoney. I thought that was pretty offensive actually on behalf of the ACF sister there.
The federal ALP could but they won’t. They should even if it means a high court challenge like the Franklin but they won’t. Just vote Green.
How extraordinary that a South Australian Senator should choose to issue the death warrant for the Coorong. Does Penny Wong seek to be remembered as “Storm Girl”?
Years of inaction and heads in the sand by all political persuasions, inept politicians shuffling paper and avoiding the hard issues while they see their 2 terms out, greed and un-Australian behaviour up-river and still no reigning common sense, all while one of Australias natural heritage wonders chokes to death before our eyes. So their best solution a wier because non of the politicians will make a non-political hard decision …maybe the combined Labour Governments of Australia would wake up if this started our first civil war!!!
Well said, Bernard Keane! That is thinking outside the square, and the first time I have heard of compulsory water loans. Bloody good idea! The Feds need to take over the water immediately, and stop pandering to NSW.
Yes! Let’s call her Storm Girl!
Thanks Crikey for calling it the Coorong again, which starts at the murray mouth with Lakes Alexandrina and Albert.. The ‘lower lakes’ has become a bit of a weasel word, having none of the environmental or emotional impact of the Coorong, it has been perfect for political expediency during this whole sorry episode.
Come on Storm Girl do something!
I also note there is also 800gigalitres of water held privately in Queensland which cannot be touched.
I hold those holding water in reserve as being responsible for the mess of the river & they should suffer whatever pain it takes to retsore the river… NOW!!!
iN DAYS BEFORE THE BARRAGES, THE RIVER DRIED OUT FROM THE TOP DOWN
No need to do an audit — it’s already been done see:
http://www.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/29/MDB_Water_Availability.pdf
This ignorant babbling is driving me crazy, how many of you actually have ever had anything much to do with the system and how many have simply taken it for granted?
This has been happening since the developers moved into Goolwa in the 1960’s and built on everything they could, drew on billions of gallons of water and destroyed a very fragile eco and river system. I know because I watched it all happening from 1965-77 and can now only weep.
There is this babbling from nongs like Hunt who was part of the Howard mob who refused to address the situation and one of the most senior members of his government was the member for Mayo for 24 years and did not make one speech or endeavour on behalf of the river that literally ran through his yard.
It is the filthy, polluting boats that have poisoned the soils, the farmers who have poisoned the waters and soils and the builders who destroyed the dune system that was the natural protection of the mouth of the river.
To rant like nutcases and blame Penny Wong is insane and you should be ashamed of yourselves.
And Bro-Sheffield, Wong grew up on the river, John Rua and many others have done and audit and there is no bloody water.
We need those WW11 Dambusters to blast the Cubbie Station 8 metre high walls and let the juices flow.
To hear Greg Hunt bang on about Penny Wong being responsible for this debacle would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Surely the Aus public has not already forgotten that it was Howard who did nothing positive about this for more than ten years and the current situation is because of that. Patrick Secker the federal liberal member for the Coorong area also did next to nothing for all those years to try and get Howard’s mob moving. The recovered water for e-flows after Howards time was zero litres.
Once upon a time, when Oz males were REAL men, the sort that died fighting for mother England in the battlefields of Ypres, who slugged it out on the Kokoda trail. These same men wouldn’t have stood for decades of rotten, pusillanimous government at Federal level, and shonky corruptness of government at state level. They would do something about it. So, no one has the money of the ba*tards of Cubbie Station. Release a few Whirraways out of air museums, strafe and bomb the banks which are holding back all the water for growing rice and cotton. Bomb it all so flat that they’ll never want to try it on again. Everyone will be a winner. The planes need the exercise, the mateship ethos will be reaffirmed, the crooks of Cubbie station will be able to claim insurance. The politicians will be made to look as asinine as they really are, the environment will be a huge benefit of all of this, news paper and visual media will have a huge boost in revenue. And the brave men who do the job will be honoured beyond their wildest dreams. The people who run ANZAAC day will have a special event for Liberation of Cubbie Station and they can march with the other diggers.
Marilyn what about the Iraq connection?
PS: The Coorong already is salty - extremely so in its southern reaches. So why exactly does it need to be ‘saved’?
All this talk about “irreparable damage” to the Murray and the lower lakes. So what happened in the olden days before the Goolwa barrage? The sea water used to flow in naturally. Locals tell me there used to be reports of sharks being sighted or caught many kilometres up the river. That would solve the nuisance of water skiers. The river certainly needs a good flushy, but doomsayers should be called to account.
JamesK & Tom McLoughlin, I have to say that I didn’t get the allusion of A to O. It’s just that I’ve been having problems with a wayward ‘Apple’ and haven’t been keeping up. What did I miss?
So much for RAMSAR and any real value with which we treat our international agreements. Penny Wong is a politician, no more, no less, so let’s not all act too surprised. Moreover, she is inheriting a mess from past Liberal and Labor governments of all persuasions - at both state and federal level. Sure, she is hardly inspirational but name any inspirational politician!
Joseph Elliot is partially correct. Yes, sharks were reported as far as Murray Bridge (possibly the Bull Shark, Carcharhinus leucas although in these waters more likely the Bronze Whaler, Carcharhinus brachyurus). However, the sea did not flow in and set a marine environment. The area was, before the barrages were built, primarily estuarine and more often fresh than saline. Only during low river flows did salt water move in and up the system and density differences provided for quite distinct flow patterns in the fresh water, with relatively little mixing laterally or in the water column.
By building a weir you are going to reduce evaportaion of (relatively) fresh water from the lower lakes as it will be contained in the river. However you are then simply turning the Murray into one long drain (or sewer) although some would argue that is what it has become. In high flow periods the weir can be breached and flow restored, but this is not really being provisioned for by the SA government and so you can assume it will likely become a fixed installation. The one advantage of opening the barrages is that you can filter out the big nasties (ie: sharks) if you want and moreover, prevent acid sulphate soils from producing highly acidic conditions as the water cover recedes. The acid sulphate soils are completely natural, but a lack of water over them is not. Once that happened you could not reinundate them and then open the weir, you’d contaminate a good part of the lower river reaches.
The water skier problem can easily be solved with a large calibre rifle and is arguably more fun. More problematic at the moment is the reliance on lake water for dairy, beef and vineyards in the lakes region. Water at the barrages is often over 24,000 EC units salinity. Four years ago it was usually around 2500 or so often. The salinity of the lake water is often now higher than it was pre-barrage. This is destroying arguably sustainable industries in the area, and unfortunately, vineyards, whose use of water and imperative to maintain soil health is both economic and advantageous to the local environment insofar as if we are to have any human activity, it is preferable.
The river does need a flow through it and perhaps more importantly the floodplains along it desperately need water.
What water really remains in the system is unknown. Andrew’s reference to the MDBC fails to take into account that the MDBC does not manage all water, the states are complicit in providing inaccurate figures, over allocation and p*ss poor management, and the federal government really has a very poor idea of the true state of water in the catchment (not just dam holdings but surface water, private holdings, water table levels and artesian/bore sources. An audit does need to be done by a single national agency. If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it.
Marilyn is understandably upset but people have to live somewhere and Australia has scant suitable land for that given our (profilgate? consuming? preferred? take your pick) lifestyle. Certainly we could do better developments. Farm effluent is a problem but along the whole river, not just the lakes and there it is quite small. There are very few boats in the lower lakes region on a per capita or boat per unit area basis so that is a dubious claim.
Pamela has the best idea.
Yes Venise but would it win votes? We must think carefully about which ba-tar-s to bomb….
Hi Andrew
Interesting water audit but can’t find the Cubbie Station dams listed. Just wondering how come they are not mentioned considering that they sucked off much of the flooding waters at the HQ of the Balonne system and are reputed to be pretty full, how come they are not in the audit.
She may be right but it is a big call and she should provide the advice.
Hunt’s call was far from “unfortunate”! It was hard edged politics and I did not believe that he had it in him. It has brought the Labor governments’(plural) expensive mismanagement of this issue into sharp relief …..and do not worry Labor lovers…..the money is not theirs…
If a fire were raging in another world heritage area like Kakadu, and NSW owned enough fire trucks to send up to fight the fire, do you think the Federal Government would allow Iemma to withhold use of them?
The sorry truth about the Lower Lakes and Coorong is that there are no “nesworthy” images or video. A dried out lake, and missing birds don’t evoke the same fear and emotions as 100 metre high flames devouring native bush.
Often difficult to decipher Tom McLoughlin but it is usually worth the effort. i do not get the A/O list thing?
The problem with the Murray is not that the farmers don’t vote Labor. The problem is that the state governments f-ck over the national interest. Howard/Nelson would have solved it by overiding Victoria resistance in cort if necessary. Rudd/Wong threw insane amounts of money at Brumby and still left Victoria’s intersts ahead of the national one. It is the most manifest of Rudd’s failures thus far.