The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Cubbie Station out to con the taxpayer, says Heffernan
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Senator Bill Heffernan, one of Cubbie Station’s staunchest critics, opposes a Commonwealth purchase of the vast water cotton farm and instead has called for it to be scaled back to a sustainable level. Heffernan, who as a Junee farmer and parliamentarian has lived and studied water allocation more than any other Commonwealth or State MP, has previously called the overland harvesting system on which Cubbie relies “a national disgrace” and wants it reformed to provide sustainable water allocation, rather than the Commonwealth paying up to $450m for the Station — a purchase Heffernan believes would amount to a fraud. While Cubbie Group chairman Keith De Lacy has boasted of the station’s 538 gigalitre storage capacity as part of attempts to drum up interest in the Station – which has been financially hammered by the drought — Heffernan explains that this is based on a 70GL extraction from the Balonne River, and the remainder — 469GL — on “unregulated, unlicensed, unmetered, free” overland flows. The overland flow from the floodplain — which Cubbie Group insists “would have been naturally consumed through seepage, evaporation and evapo-transpiration in the areas that are now levied off from the floodplain as storage and field areas” — would if undiverted enter the Balonne and Culgoa Rivers. Cubbie draws off up to half of every flood in the catchment, preventing it from entering the Balonne-Culgoa (and enabling Cubbie to boast of the small amount of water it takes from the Murray-Darling system). Crikey has previously described the impact of the massive Cubbie diversion in northern NSW. Heffernan — who regards Cubbie as a “great vision but on the wrong scale” — notes that the diversion originated in the 1990s when there was no regulation of overland flows. The new Queensland Government resource operating plan that would license the current Cubbie diversion authorisation is in draft form and under court challenge. In effect the vast majority of Cubbie’s diversion remains unlicensed. “It would be a fraud on taxpayers if the Queensland Government was to issue a licence for the overland flows knowing it was unsustainable, and that the Commonwealth was to purchase the Station,” Heffernan said. “Cubbie should be left in private hands and its diversion should be scaled back to a sustainable level, using new technology.” According to Heffernan, farmers on the Gascoyne River in the Carnarvon area of Western Australia were able to generate $70m worth of returns in 2006-07 from a total water allocation of 8.5 GL. The same allocation would have generated just $3m in cotton. Heffernan has previously criticised the way the Commonwealth water buyback program is being implemented under Penny Wong, who last year faced persistent criticism that she wasn’t moving fast enough to acquire water in the Murray-Darling Basin. In particular, Heffernan has been critical of the lack of due diligence from Commonwealth officials in actually checking on what they are purchasing, and the purchase of low security entitlements, or in some cases flood event entitlements that are virtually meaningless. An ANAO performance audit of the water buyback scheme might yield some interesting results in terms of value for taxpayers’ money. And as Heffernan says, the real issue with Cubbie is ending its vast and unsustainable diversion of overland flows, not who owns the property. |
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15 Comments
If ever there was a case for a reality replay of that great epic “THE DAMBUSTERS” this is it.
It is a national disgrace that successive governments have allowed Cubbie Station owners to get away with raping the environment.
Dont buy it - reclaim it for our rivers sake.
Interesting to see I’m not the only person to whom the idea of taking explosively direct action on Cubbie Station has occurred - and I’m certainly no greenie ratbag. But if I were…
The present owners of Cubbie Station must be forced to complete a full site restoration program to restore the area to its original condition before being permitted to sell the land. All non-biodegradable material should be removed from the area at the present owners expense.
Yes yes yes Cubbie Station very naughty….govs complicit etc….but hang on a minute….Big Bill actually making perfect sense and having an opinion on an issue that is righjt on the money!!!!! I am in shock…need to lie down….
Yes, I’m flabbergasted at the good sense coming out of Heffernan as well.
Huey and Evan, that is the problem with nutters like Heffernan, on the rare ocassions they actually contribute something useful to national debate (rather than flights of fancy regarding High Court justices trawling for boys) pretty much everyone ignores anything they say because of their history of insanity.
Cubbie Group Chairman Keith de Lacy:
Keith De Lacy was for fifteen years the Labor member for Cairns and Treasurer of Queensland from 1989 to 1996.
Well, well how surprising!
Cubbie Station is an ecocrime of Madoff proportions. The Qld Govt. is the responsible authority, an oxymoron in this case.
No more water theft.
Cotton and rice in the arid zone? Genius. Let a hundred carpet-baggers bloom…John Elliott, are you there?
You’ve got to wonder if Bill isn’t being clever, and he wants the reverse of what he is saying to go ahead. But then he’d be being clever, and ohhh! My head hurts! Stop it!
Quite possibly, the appropriate body to prune Cubby Station’s entitlements to water, especially surface runoff, is the QLD Gov’t. Like the NSW Gov’t and coal owners’ rights some years back, quite possibly the Qld constitution does not require restitution in the same way that the Australian constitution does.
In other words, if Canberra claims back the water, it almost certainly will have to pay dearly for doing so. However, states were constituted many years previously and the Crown, acting as the state government, may have a bigger stick to wield.
Time for Canberra to get tough with Queensland?
Something’s gone wrong. I’ve been working my heart out and pretty well silent for at least two weeks.
At last I’ve finished and have gratefully resumed my association with/Crikey. What does Crikey do? Bernard Keane it isn’t April Fools day; what’s going on? Bill Heffernan saying something sensible? BK, what have you been smoking? Please could you let me have some?
Cubbie Station is more than a national disgrace. It is a national illumination of the attitude of most of the members of the National Party, and the people who vote for it. Also it is a grim reminder to anyone who might be harbouring a desire to vote for any member of the Liberal Party who has willfully chosen to ignore the huge part it has had to play in the destruction of the Murray Darling rivers/basin.
Now we are asked to believe Bill Heffernan’s announcement? Sorry but I don’t think so. There has to be an ulterior motive behind this.
An ancient saw, but none the worse for that -“adversity breedeth strange bedfellows”. I’m not too keen on Bill trying to force wheat out of his arid plains in the odd “good” year (Oz wheat yields, even in the wet 80s ,was significantly less -1.02 tonnes pHa- than an Iraqi peasant -1.5 tonnes pHa- sources Australian Year Books 1980 -1989 - with a bullock & a bent stick, on land that has been hammered for 3,000 yerars SINCE the Summerians warned Gilgamesh of the ‘white plague” (salt) covering the land.
It IS a Qld gov responsibility, pure & simple. Xenophon, as with so much else, has the simple, correct and non-argument answer, Federal responsibility for the waters of the Murray-Darling, aka ( long ago, in a country far, far away) as the OVERFLOW!!!!, aka the CHANNEL Country. Look at a a topographic map, the ABoriginals of the (now) arid Interior lived on fish omlettes before the arrival of euroids & axes & hard hooved animals.
WTF are we doing using valuable water required by the Murray Darling system to grow cotton at Cubbie!! This is the most inappropriate crop to be growing in Australia - it requires lots of water and lots of pesticide to keep it healthy. Let’s import cotton from Bangladesh which has the water and needs the income.
To those expressing shock at Heffernan being right - whatever you may think of him Heffernan has lived and breathed environmental issues for decades and has more soundly-based views on such matters than most of us will ever have.
C’mon Bernard
pull the other one!! Yeah for sure, Bill has been observing and preaching sustainable farming practices for years, the lone voice in the wilderness calling for the whole agricultural industry to join his merry crusade……..NOT!!! Prof Bill Heffernan the emeritus prof of rural sociology from Missouri he ain’t!!