Cubbie Station was never sustainable
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While Cubbie Station is a vast blight on Queensland’s environmental record, and on water policy in Australia generally, its entry into voluntary administration is nothing to celebrate. It is merely confirmation of what has been evident for well over a decade — Cubbie Station was fundamentally unsustainable. Yesterday afternoon, an even more cranky than usual Barnaby Joyce held a press conference up in the Press Gallery and launched a savage attack on his Coalition colleague Bill Heffernan, in effect blaming both Heffernan and the Government for Cubbie’s fate. If Heffernan was especially litigious, which he isn’t, he might consult his lawyers, so critical were Joyce’s comments. Joyce has been a long-term apologist for Cubbie Station, a somewhat understandable view given he lives down the road from it. But he stands as a polar opposite to Heffernan on water policy, not merely in attitude but knowledge. Heffernan has probably forgotten more about water issues than Joyce will ever know. Joyce’s comments were a remarkable distortion of the facts. Not merely did he try to pin the blame on Heffernan, he also claimed that a lack of regulatory certainty was almost as big a factor in the financial difficulties faced by Cubbie as the drought. As Crikey has previously noted (following the great work of journalist Phil Dickie), Cubbie was developed with virtually no regulatory restrictions by successive Queensland Governments, and particularly the Goss Government, whose Treasurer, Keith De Lacy, ended up Chairman of the Cubbie Group. The regulatory generosity extended to the fact that Cubbie was paying just $3700 a year for an allocation of over 500,000 ML of water. That’s because Cubbie is based primarily on the interception of overland flows, drawing off flood events that would otherwise enter the Balonne and Culgoa Rivers. It is licensed to draw “only” 70 GL out of the Culgoa itself, which is the basis for the claim — repeated by Joyce yesterday — that it only draws out a tiny fraction of water from the Murray-Darling Basin. Virtually the entire Cubbie business model was based on overland flows, which were unregulated and free in the 1990s. The Queensland Government — which continues to ignore the impacts of its water policy decisions downstream — was in the process of handing licenses for those overland flows to Cubbie until a court challenge halted the process earlier this year. If it’s one thing that Cubbie always had under successive Queensland governments, it’s certainty that it would face virtually no regulation. All Heffernan — who has so far remained judiciously silent on Joyce’s claims — did back in August was to point out that the overland flows licensing process was under court challenge, and call for Cubbie Station to be — rather than purchased by the Government — instead left in private hands and scaled back to a more sustainable level. He has previously called Cubbie “visionary, but on the wrong scale.” In retrospect Heffernan’s call was exactly right. Nick Xenophon expressed the same views, although oddly Joyce failed to have a swing at the independent Senator as well. So what does Keith De Lacy think sent Cubbie into administration? Bill Heffernan and Nick Xenophon? Regulatory uncertainty? “It was drought that beat us,” De Lacy said yesterday. No floods, no water for Cubbie. That’s what is technically known as “unsustainable.” That plus owing several hundred million dollars. Perhaps the collapse of Cubbie will be the catalyst for the Queensland Government to take a serious look at how it manages water. When even the mighty Cubbie is brought to its knees despite decades of favourable regulation, there’s clearly something profoundly wrong with the way Queensland manages its natural resources. |
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18 Comments
Cubbie and its clones on the Murray-Darling system are an obscene environmental crime. If Sen.Joyce can’t comprehend this he doesn’t have a future. He should irrigate his brain, not the desert.
One did not have to be a science graduate to know that Cubbie Station was “unsustainable”. What Bernard Keane has done is explain it and criticise Barnaby Joyce for his abysmally ignorant statements. It won’t take long for it to dawn on even more landholders that their management is also unsustainabe. When our present form of agriculture reduces the quality and quantity of soil, can’t manage on water gathered within its own property, relies on inorganic fertilizer, and chemical inputs as pesticides, and causes increasing salinity blind freddy knows that it is unsustainable. Finance from Governments for “drought” and floods should be a thing of the past. Money should only be available to those landholders who recognise that their future on the land requires them to radically change their approach. When Governments at all levels understand and apply the rpinciples of sustainability Cubbie will just be the first in a long line of landholders who are recognised as unsustainable.
This disasterous use of water is not just restricted to Cubbie Station. Hillston in Sth West NSW is another disaster which should be stopped NOW. How can we let a relatively new irrigation area get established in what is essentially a desert environment.
When are we going to look at the use of underground water in the same light as river water.
We should be doing it now.
We won’t though because people think by closing down some of these schemes we are costing farmers their livelihood. That is not true ,they have enjoyed the benifits of farming these areas for long enough to reap a reward.
I cannot understand why farmers in the Griffith/Leeton area are not calling for the cancelling of the large Hillston pumping licences. They should be because this will eventually lead to the failure of the MIA and their future.
Even worse is the BHP deal for 3 million litres of free water per day to be sucked out of the Great Artesian Basin to sustain their vandalism at various mines.
Joyce’s argument about job losses overlooks the fact that it was always a job migration. The downstream water starved communities lost jobs and businesses and shrank their communities. With a chance that flows will return as the rains return, so those downstream may recover.
Will this be “the catalys for the Queensland Government to take a serious look at how it manages water”? Not a chance.
Why would you think that Cubbie Station going into administration would be the catalyst for the Queensland Government to take a serious look at how it manages water. The Queensland government never looks at anything seriously, and management in this context is an oxymoron. One of the greatest so-called managers produced by Queensland has now conned his way into becoming Prime Minister.
Unfortunately politics and sustainable resource management do not mix. The environment generally comes out a poor loser, because the con artists have deeper pockets than the environmentalists.
Over committal of water resources is endemic , and the lack of coordination and agreement by State and Federal government across the country is a national disgrace.
Cronyism is rife, and corrupt practices of the “brown bag” variety as well as looking after mates is endemic. It has been observed that looking for integrity in politics is like looking for virtue in the whorehouse and the analogy is appropriate (with apologies to the whores for the odious comparison).
Heffernan should have told Joyce that the continued operation of Cubbie would leave Australia ‘deliberately barren’.
There is only one prospect worse than thoughts of the disasterous behaviour of past Labor governments wrt this issue, and the issue of water policy in general in Queensland, and that is the fact that it would have been a lot worse if the Nationals, or LNP, or whatever they want to call themselves this week, had been in charge of water policy in the recent past. Joyce’s position on this matter makes that fact plain as day.
Very good article Bernard, but I think it comes as no surprise to know the barbarous delinquency of QLD governments about almost everything.
Certainly Cubbie Station was bound to fall on its own sword sooner or later, but I would love to see an article about Victoria’s even greater barbarism on almost everything. Not to mention the complete misuse of water by John Brumby, and his government, over an eleven or more year period which has seen the death of the MDB. As a side issue mention should be made of the wildly expensive desalination plant, which would never have been needed if it had been made mandatory for all buildings to have water tanks.
Now comes the news that vast areas of Gippsland are occupied by houses set at about waterline. Already, people are being told to rebuild on higher land. But the state government thinks it doesn’t matter if the sea swallows up the desalination plant. I don’t think it matters either. Doubtless for different reasons.
Bernard Keane loves banging on about Cubby Station and the Murray Darling. Much of it is actually good. The best plan by a country mile for the Murray Darling was the Howard Turnbull plan the implementation of which was hijacked and the country blackmailed by Brumby. If Howard had been re-elected in 2007 we would now have that plan and it was manifestly better than the stinker that Rudd agreed to with the same weasel.
You can hardly blame Cubby Station and its owners because of the lack of governmental management of water resources. Their owners have two act in their own and their investors interests and in the community that they support around them, which by all accounts they do honourably.
Moreover, they provide good employment for a significant number of the local aboriginal community. More generally, you cannot blame the bush for looking after its own because since when did the elite in Canberra and Brisbane look out from them?
Bernard Keane certainly does not represent them and the irony and hypocrisy as uses Senator Heffernan who does indeed know more about water resource in this country than almost any other politician must add insult to injury.
It must be the first time, I’ve ever heard Bernard Keane say something positive about Bill Heffernan!
The chief of staff of the government most responsible for this catastrophic abuse of water resources is now Prime Minister and Bernard Keane is merely but one of his media sycophants.
If Cubbie had produced sturgeon caviar, winter strawberries and gold plated spuds it would still have been an environmental obscenity. To grow so low a value crop as cotton is beyond satire. As with those behind the GFC, if they are so rich, how come they ain’t smart?
“As with those behind the GFC, if they are so rich, how come they ain’t smart?”
They get rich using OPM … and then exit when the turd hits the turbine.
There should be a statue somewhere to George Goyder. In 1865 he warned S.A. farmers not to venture beyond the 300mm isohyet. Naturally, they ignored him (“rain follows the plough”) , had a few good seasons and were then ruined by “drought”. This calamity was a great bonus to the inland tourist industry- numerous photogenic abandoned farmhouses…
Perhaps Bill Heffernan has a little pagan templet to George in his loungeroom….
Just found this lovely quote from Charles Gent of Flinders Uni. (May 2009)
“For his pains, the industrious Goyder was subjected to a barrage of derision. His early trips to the mid-north to survey, rate and value land suitable for cultivation had been vehemently opposed by a group of wealthy and influential pastoralists, who, prior to the valuations, ran their sheep in the colony’s northerly expanses at minimal cost. Once the Line was declared, Goyder was set upon by lobbying farmers. Not content with the areas released for selection, the farmers argued that neither government nor Goyder should act as an impediment to settlement. They denounced the Line as a “theoretical bauble,” pointing out that similar lines drawn across the colony in previous years had all been abandoned. And in any case, they argued, rain followed the plough.”
What’s changed?
What’s changed? Between the time of Babbage’s earlier journey north and Goyder’s trip, there had been some heavy rainfalls and the countryside was in full flower. Goyder, in contradiction of earlier assessments by Edward Eyre, was able to report with some amazement that Lake Blanche contained fresh water and that the land was fertile. But he was a ‘new chum’ and easily deceived by this temporary lushness.
As a result of his optimistic account there was a rush of applications for leases in this ‘promised land’. It was not long, however, before these pioneers of the north were sending back gloomy reports of barren, waterless and useless tracts of land. http://www.goyder.sa.gov.au
Cubbie was a rort. Cotton is a rort. Hemp could be grown at a tenth of the cost, on a tenth of the water, to produce a hundred-fold more useful product.
“Landline” must have a sense of humour, describing Cooper’s Ck. as one of Aust’s last “wild rivers”. But we know what they mean…anyway, their story today about Qld possibly allowing irrigation on Cooper’s Ck is timely. There’s been some coverage of it in the last week or two.
Irrigating Cooper’s Ck? That really would be environmental pornography…but the Qld. Govt is quite capable of rooting the river, filming the action and selling it as sustainable procreation. “Triumph of the Gonads”, perhaps.
Burke and Wills did not respond before deadline.
State governments are buy-able and so long as Oz persists in having so many layers of government so long will we have the outrage of places like Cubbie Station, the MDB, drought-stricken Victoria, and every other environmental disaster to be slung around our necks like bunches of festering and maggot-ridden albatrosses.
If the people of Australia had any brains they would get rid of State governments and do something radical with local Councils. Perhaps by paying them a good deal of money and making their records transparent would be one step to take. The ability of a state government to over-ride our Federal Government is the sort of thing which bumptious clods and serial bullies like Barnaby Joyce, not to mention the Premier of Victoria, John Brumby, to crow about. Pity about the devastation done to the land.
Even more sickening is the amount of money dished out to the pathetic rural sector in times of drought. They, and their mining pals, irrigation pals, old uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, caused the various droughts that assail this nation-let ‘em stew-therefore they should suffer in silence. Either that or issue licenses to would-be farmers. They’re the ones who are to be found during the drought-on our national television channel scanning the never-ending horizon and whingeing about the fact it hasn’t rained for the past ten years. Fast forward and there is our happy rural. It has rained-the drought has broken-and there he is mindlessly repeating what he has done for the past ten or more years. Has any effort been made in proper soil management; has he learned anything by his experiences? No, he is just another C:CW.
For Cubbie Station to pay a scant “$37,000 a year for an allocation of over 500,000ML of water.” is one of the most obscene statements I have ever read. This means over five hundred thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools has been obtained for virtually nothing. The Barnaby Joyces of this world should be hung drawn and quartered very, very slowly. Because the sum of $37,000 was but a down-payment of the full sum given to various individuals in the QLD government. Anna Bligh and all her predecessors and fellow premiers, are worse than a grotesque joke.
Actually, I think Burke and Wills have responded and it was well before deadline.