Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Jenny, thought you might be interested in this:

TABLELAND irrigators are outraged the State Government is dumping almost a billion litres of water a day from Lake Tinaroo in the midst of a national water crisis.

I wonder what public attitude would be about the water situation if Snowy Hydro had been sold.

BTW, although John Howard's late-coming veto of the sale is touted by him and the populace at large as his responding to public opinion, I understand that this is not so.

As I recall the process, Iemma said he would sell, Victoria went along, as did the PM.  Reacting to public disquiet, Iemma said that it would only be sold to Australians. At this stage, Howard called the whole thing off, and received kudos for being sensitive to the peoples' wishes.

I've heard that the real reason was actually that according to the free trade agreement, any public offering in Australia had to be offered to Americans on the same terms. Therefore, Iemma's committment made a sale impossible, and John stepped in. To applause.

Does anyone know if this is/isn't factual?

Craig R: Great question F Kendall.

The scenario you present was reported by Rod Myer in The Age in June 2006 (here's a link to it via bilaterals.org). 

Here's a link to the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement.

AUSFTA, in its provisions on investment, says nationals of both countries must have the same rights to assets in the country of the other, which makes limitations on foreign investments a problem.

Existing arrangements, such as capping Qantas’ maximum foreign ownership at 49 per cent, are accepted under the pact, but any new limits would require negotiation.

Steady rain has just begun to fall on our farm which lies slap bang in the middle of the northern wheat belt. If it lasts for a few days crop prospects will lift and it is still warm enough for pasture growth for livestock. It also appears to have rained further west. While it will take inches and inches over a long period to break this drought, lesser amounts of rain at the right time can guarantee a crop. It is not so much how much rain that falls on the cropping areas, as when it falls that matters most. And right now is just great. May it come down in buckets.

Those AWB shares are starting to look a bit brighter too with every drop that falls. 

I'll bet John Howard feels his prospects lift too with every drop.

From my experience back in the fities and sixties, a wet warm May was usually followed by a heavy snow season. So this early rain could be a good sign. Here's hoping anyway.

We in Australia have our water problems, right enough.

And others have theirs.

Here's something I found interesting reading the newspapers today.  Michelle Grattan, respected for 'her tireless, tough and fair' coverage of politics, notes in her piece in The Age:

There is no doubt it would be desirable if one level of government had full jurisdiction over the Murray-Darling. But Canberra [read John Howard] is now paying the price for presenting its takeover hastily and rather arrogantly. It assumed the objections were just political when they had more substance than that.

It seems John Howard's haste to rather arrogantly make some political mileage on the Murray-Darling Basin situation was noticed by the farmers too. Howard's spin was revealed by Rachel Kleinman and Jewel Topsfield also in The Age:

The controversy over water allocations started last Thursday when Mr Howard warned of the "unprecedented situation in the Murray-Darling Basin in relation to irrigation allocations unless significant rain fell in the next month".

He said if no allocations were possible, it could have a devastating impact on farming, with the basin providing more than 70 per cent of Australia's irrigated crops.

Mr Howard later clarified that unless there was heavy rain within six to eight weeks, no water would be allocated to irrigators at the start of the season.

But Mr Cooper said distressed irrigators initially understood there would be no water all year. "It clearly caused a great deal of concern and angst across northern Victoria," he said.

Mr Cooper said farmers had already been told on February 15 that they would start the season on zero allocations.

This was no different to the past four years when they had started on zero but had been given some water, up to their full allocation in some cases, during the season.

So it seems Honest John has been spinning the situation somewhat for his political purposes ... and we thought he had more substance than that.

An awful lot of hope is riding on that cloud bank massing over SA. Having prayed hard for rain I have just ordered in the fertilizer for the crop and I expect a nice little fall by early next week out of that cloud to give it a good kickstart. 

So stand by o ye of little faith. You might get a surprise. I suggest you go and buy some AWB shares because once it rains they will lift for sure.

Jenny, I have lived most of my life in the North of Australia in Darwin, and Cairns. I have been to Kununurra several times and sailed on the magnificent Ord River dam. The potential of the North is enormous. If we had been developed by Indonesia and not a European nation, I am sure our north would have been the developed and the deserts of the south largely ignored.

I went on a picnic on Sunday to Babinda Boulders about 40km south of Cairns; it was beautiful Ulysses butterflies everywhere. Lush green growth was abundant, even though it was still recovering from the ravages of Cyclone Larry.   The water was flowing crystal clear and millions of liters running out to sea. The local area has had over 3 meters of rain in the last twelve months. The mountain water falls are all flowing into the Mulgrave River. There is a railway line alongside the river that runs all the way to Melbourne. Why can’t we run a pipeline alongside the railway line filling all dams on the way? Even if we used the pipe line during the Wet, there would be an abundant supply of water.

If C. Y. O’Connor could build a 700 km pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie over a hundred years ago I am sure we could find the courage and resources to do it today.

Every morning I visit a number of sites. Included are the Latest Globe Satellite Image from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), and the Whole Globe Montage from the University of Wisconsin.

The BOM site has up till recently shown a clear bimodal cloud distribution in both southern and northern hemispheres. Cloud is concentrated in two bands in each hemisphere, one equatorial and one polar, leaving a temperate zone almost cloud free. This is seen clearly in today’s view, for the N hemisphere. But interestingly, the pattern seems to be changing to something more favourable in our hemisphere.

I am not a meteorologist or climatologist. Maybe someone like Will Howard could shed some light on this.

Utmost confusion around these parts.  The Tiser is spruiking the construction's inevitability as Murray Minister Maywald is saying on local ABC Radio that the information was old and possibly no longer applicable (?)

 [excerpt]

An SA Water Strategy Development paper prepared in December said "the weir is inevitable" and that "with the realistic worst-case scenario, the weir alone may not be sufficient".

 It's been a few months since the hundred GL-saving Twin Lakes was in the paper... maybe now Howard will be able to override Rann in the "national interest?"

Business in watery PPPs is about to boom, methinks.

Oh and while I'm at it, wouldn't we sort out the water problem more quickly if everyone uses the same consultant?

All the evidence I've seen - particularly in some of the sessions and posters at Greenhouse 2005 (most of which didn't make it into even the long version of the WGII ANZ chapter) - suggests that there is approximately zero prospect that there will be any significant farming at all going on in the Murray-Darling basin well before the end of the century. My guess is that the ones that get out early will get much better prices for their stock and assets than the ones that hang for the rains.

I note the final FAQ about what does a farmer do when his normal source for stock water, eg by channel is cut off, the answer given is that he can either cart water or destock.

The implications of that for the large dairying industry in the MDB are drastic. Dairying is a heavy user of water both for irrigation and for cleaning of dairies, let alone the need for the cows to drink. Less than optimum volumes of clean water for the cows and their production falls. Carting water for dairy farms and cattle is not really a viable option given the low return farmers currently receive for their milk, around 36 cents a litre, when 40 cents is being quoted now as the current cost of production, before the water is even shut off. 

So no doubt many dairy farmers, particularly the older ones, will simply decide it is better to just call it a day. While beef producers forced to destock can head off and buy steers in more favoured areas to fatten when things turn around, dairy farmers cannot. Prices for quality dairy cattle will skyrocket and be beyond most.  To get back in one would have to buy young heifers at best price and wait till they started producing at around 3 years of age.  Dairy infrastructure is a costly asset to have sitting idle, like headers when the wheat crop fails, and those with low equity in their assets will be the first to go - some of the likely loss of income and assets referred to in this report. Cold hard facts with enormous human cost.

Large scale loss of the genetic base of the dairy herds in the basin, built up over decades through careful breeding and managment will also be a barrier to recovery of that industry. It is ironic that the decline in the dairy industry on the fertile flood plains of the Macleay began with the loss of 20 000 cattle, mostly dairy, in the big flood of 1949. As a child I sat on our hill and watched as just one of them, a jersey cow, struggled far out in a torrent of water thirty feet deep, till my father shot her and she sank from sight.  Farmers lost entire herds in that flood and the industry took a fatal hit. It never really recovered and as one drives around the area one sees the remains of the little dairy buildings on every farm, in grotesque attitudes, silent monuments to a battle lost and fought decades ago, mostly against a river that could yield bounty, but could also rise up and destroy.

That and encroaching urban development further south forced the coastal industry into the irrigation dependant hinterland where it now is likely doomed for lack of water.  In the meantime the big muddy Macleay and many rivers like it flow out to sea. Ironic. 

Recovery from catastrophes which require a long lead time, such as for dairying and orchard enterprises is very difficult and doubtless many will not have the capital to start again and wait for years for some return.  Small farmers will go and no doubt the big corporates will move in if and when the water returns. 

As I contemplated our own drought stricken property recently, now into its seventh year, for the first time I felt deeply depressed. Maybe that will change when the rains finally come. I can empathise so much with what those on the rivers now feel with the bleak outlook in front of them. We should prepare for an even higher level of depression amongst rural  people when the tap is finally turned off.  

While it is said rural people are very resilient, and that has to be true, there is a limit to what one can cope with. I know that. I have known many times the worry and despair that is a daily traveller in a farming family struck down by drought. We went through it many times. We never really recovered from the big 78-82 drought, not as a family, and not financially. The stress was horrendous in those years and it left a lot of scars and bad memories. That is being played out across the length and breadth of this country every day right now and it will  take a high human toll.  This drought is into its seventh year. Seven years of worry and stress for thousands of people and we all know that stress is a major cause of illness, suicide and relationship breakdown. 

Hopefully the younger farmers will hang in there for when the rains and water return. Rural youth once lost is often not recovered.  I have watched all those in our part of the world go this past decade. They did not come back. 

But the resilience of even some of the older ones is inspiring. Such as the not so young couple on Dateline the other night who run the boating and camping ground at Good Hope on Burrinjuck dam. With their boats high and dry, the lake all but gone and the camping ground all but empty they have only hope to live on. Such gracious and calm acceptance of that which is beyond their power to change moved me to turn up an old poem written by my late father and to wish for them that those days will return soon.

Burrinjuck

Bare trees must forever shiver

In this inundated land,

Where the moonlight-fashioned shadows

Interlaced with silver bands

Steal across the silent water

Light and darkness hand in hand.

Here the red hills, old untroubled

Curtained by the wispy fogs,

Hear the boo-book chime the hours

O'er the throbbing song of frogs.

While sister rivers, sold to bondage,

Victims of a master race,

Chained to concrete walls forever

Are bloated and defaced.

This Murray Darling Report does not tell us anything that we did not really know. In the FAQ's the one question not asked or answered is why it was all allowed to come to this. Why was not water use more tightly prioritised long ago when there was something left in the upper Murray storages?

I wonder just what the contingency plans are for the towns if this dry spell just keeps on keeping on.  That is not spelt out. Whole communities will be devastated. One would hope that Howard will not push for tax cuts for political ends come May Budget. I could not think of anything more irresponsible in the current climate. Any Surplus may be needed not just to plan for future catastrophes like this one, but to manage the economic fallout that is staring us in the face right now.

I must say I found Costello rather confusing on the issue of the impact of likely drastic hikes in food prices due to the drought on the inflation rate. He talked of it not being expected to be too big of a problem as food is just one of the items in the basket. Now that somewhat contradicts his blaming the price inflated humble banana last year for its role in inflating prices back then. You cannot have it both ways. Anyone who believes that the massive hike in a whole range of basic foods, whether fresh or processed (eg my veggie soups) is not going to have a big impact on inflation is dreaming.

That's all we need. A PM asleep at the wheel till the tap ran dry, and a Treasurer now daydreaming. 

Thanks for posting the Report David.  Had they included a geographical map of the whole MDB showing the location of the lochs, weirs, wetlands etc would have been helpful in seeing just where the water actually is and where they plan to move it to, and from, together with the location of the towns, major industries and areas most affected will be. Some irrigators draw solely on ground water in the Basin and will at this stage not be so drastically effected, though one must wonder just how long the aquifers can last.  The volume and recharge rate of some of those in the Basin remains unknown. I guess one finds that out when the bore pump seizes up.