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.

http://www.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/29/MDB_Water_Availability.pdf

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.