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Going cheap – only $450 million ….
Going cheap – only $450 million ….
by Paul Walter
This week Australians were confronted with another egregious insult to their intelligence, namely the proposed sale of Cubbie Creek cotton station for $450 million, including to the federal government through its water rights buy back taxpayer provided funds.
Senator Bill Heffernan, who whatever his other eccentricities has long term good form concerning agriculture and ecology issues, pointed out the inflated price was arrived at through a misvaluation of the water rights issue to the property, based in part on a potential rather than actual inflow and then future viability, plus the linkage of the property to its water rights so they can't be touched.
The price obtained would, of course, come on top of previous already notoriously undervalued outrageous amounts of water obtained from inflows at what could be describes as peppercorn fees, arranged by successive Nat and Labor state governments since the eighties. The forces behind Cubbie of course conspired, and continue to conspire, to ensure that neither EPA’s nor attempts to charge more realistically for the water were and are always thwarted, while the Bligh governments recent pronouncements on water policy and land clearance maintain the gob-smacking arrogance of Queensland when it comes to the Murray-Darling.
With Cubbie Creek, the results of a corrupt and corrupted process ensured a disastrous hoarding of massive amounts of water in shallow, evaporation-prone storages, with attendant salinisation problems. The allocations were calculated on the basis of maintained water flows over time, before the impacts of climate change began to be observed, otherwise it would have the making s of a good rort, too. But realising there maybe a future crisis and as with the financial crisis having government come along to fund the scam, can't be ruled out completely, at least as to the current propositions.
Hence the lost cotton crops and evaporated water of Cubbie Creek.
Now they want to sell out.
It's about time the convenient yes minister-type arrangements for the Murray-Darling catchment allowing state government interference based on cronyism against genuine reform of resources management, were ended, and a governing body capable of making the changes necessary for that protection were incorporated, as promised in 2007.
We need to hear less from people who've sold their souls, like Barnaby Joyce and former Labor treasurer Lacey (who is the current head honcho of Cubbie), and more from genuine scientists, agronomists, ecologists and economists, for the good of the country and its citizens.
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Cubbie sinks under weight of (no) water ...
So, not $450million, then, as it sinks into administration and likely will sell for the unimproved land value or thereabouts.
Schadenfreude, anyone?
Evermore
Hi Paul. i wonder on the politico circumstances you note--that when 14 Nobel Prize winners claim fluoride affects IQ--then when we exclude our elder 'statesmen' -such as the Not Happy John contributors, the senior levels of Defence that spoke out, and the increasing majority who refuse to believe that the human story is immediately knowable from playing two sides of populist surmise of how Dr.Bogle and Dr.Chandler were victims of a stagnat pond.
Which should lead to Clunies Ross(head CSIRO),the Rural Bank,Sir Stanton-Hicks[Adelaide,Sydney Universities],using their own properties and funds to disprove the ICI cacophony of advice that
(i) Water for Every Farm required other than rainfall.
(ii) that our climate and size dictated that multibillion Ord systems will just evaporate--and waste those billions
(iii)and that savvy must be generationally acquired, and not presumed to exist by non consultation.
[GE cotton promotes bacterial spread in surgical use--Dr. Arpad Pusztai, a senior research scientist with 276 scientific papers to his name and regarded as a world expert on lectins]
hope well...
Down the drain?
Hullo, Falk.
Just came online to mention an article by the Age's Ken Davidson, 31/8, entitled Polluters win no matter who is in power and got to read your posting.
Greeting also to folk at "nuggets" thread.
We once could have excused the movers and shakers at least on the grounds that the aged farts knew no better.
We "excused" the Howard Tories from office in 2007, on this basis.
We elected an opposition making the right noises on a number of policy issues, including aboriginal rights, ecology and so called "security" issues, in the wake of the embarrassing Dr Haneef debacle, to name just a few of these.
Better educated and cognisant of the damages to unfold and their costs, in the wake of any further inaction, we rejoiced in the hope that the old politics of graft and greed was at last consigned to history and the nation finally passed into the capable hands of the newies, confident that:
".... a new day will dawn,
and the piper will lead us to reason".
What excuse can there possibly be for resulting disillusioning post-2007 epoch?
If you or other Webdiarists get the chance, get a copy of the latest issue of Dissent and study the astounding Spooner cartoon on the cover based on Durer's engraving of Adam and Eve, tempted by the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge by a serpent.
The serpent offers naked and bandy-legged Rudd and Gillard the poisoned apple of PPP's. The fig leaves cannot conceal much. Meanwhile, a bevy of symbolic figures bearing uncanny resemblances to the likes of Keating, Brumby and Turnbull to name but a few, look on aghast with trepidation (or is it boredom?) at the unfolding horror.
science...
Perhaps the same science that allows genetically modified chemicals (ie Bill Heffernan's 'save the world' agriculture solution) to be processed further down the river into so called safe drinking water. Might explain why RU486 is also not a great water purifier.
Fairwater Australia have the details of the illegal floodplain looting in both NSW and Queensland.
Suffice it to say that even 'genuine scientists' would rather debate whether such structures exist than attempt remotely feasible remedies.
RU 486?
You know, you can't go past Queensland for pig headed, head in the sand conservatism, sometimes. My above thread, vigorously responded to by so many of you in droves, dealt with the ecological consequences of what appears to be a trait.
I say above in light of the following
Most of you know of the young couple in northern Queensland facing huge gaol sentences for obtaining RU 486 to terminate an early pregnancy.
Anna Greer, writing for New Matilda, describes in Hospitals demand certainty on abortion how difficult it been to get that erstwhile redoubtable champion for progressive issues, including women's specific issues, Anna Bligh, dragged kicking and screaming into the present re the antiquated fertilty laws there.
What this demonstrates is not so much Bligh's own lack of brains, but the stranglehold a form of Hansonism also embraced by the ALP Right, has on the place. Bligh would dare not transgress the faceless factional powers that be, even on her pet issue of women's rights.
What hope therefore, for resolution of ecological,"development" ( eg graft- based ) issues, against this culture that reveals itself in so many different ways?