This morning, NSW and the Commonwealth announced a deal that will see the lifting of NSW’s embargo on water trading. Acting Prime Minister Gillard and acting NSW Premier Nathan Rees concluded a Memorandum of Understanding earlier in the week.
The announcement of the deal has been in a strange limbo since it was concluded some days ago. The NSW Irrigators’ Council’s Andrew Gregson issued a press release early yesterday morning welcoming the deal. There had been no leak: instead, Gregson had been told the announcement was imminent and that the lifting of the embargo would be gazetted by NSW Water Minister Phil Costa yesterday or today.
When Crikey spoke to Gregson yesterday afternoon, he was mystified as to why there had been no announcement, especially given the parlous financial circumstances of a number of farmers and irrigators across western NSW.
“A lot of them have the banks knocking at their doors,” he said.
By then Phil Thomson of The Land had picked up on the announcement and posted an online article. So had Peter Hunt of the Weekly Times.
Overnight, the only “announcement” was the judicious sharing of the details with metropolitan News Ltd and Fairfax journalists by the Federal Government, based on the MoU either being “announced” today or “signed” today, depending on which outlet you read. Julia Gillard and Nathan Rees finally got together this morning to make the announcement.
Just concluding the deal, letting key stakeholders know and issuing a press release apparently isn’t enough for this mob. Everything needs to be media-managed.
The embargo was a typically hamfisted NSW Labor policy and yet further evidence — as if we needed any — that management of the Murray-Darling Basin is still stuck in the political Stone Age. But for once the blame lies not in Macquarie St but somewhat further to the south, in the Victorian Government’s bloody-minded refusal to lift its own anti-competitive block on water trading, and in Canberra, which instead of punishing John Brumby’s recalcitrance, has rewarded it with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.
This meant that the vast bulk of the Commonwealth’s water acquisitions in the MDB were being made in NSW. The embargo was NSW’s way of declining to do the bulk of the heavy lifting in restoring environmental flows in the MDB.
Victoria’s only concession was a commitment earlier this month to remove its trading caps by — wait for it — 2014.
The MoU involves a replacement of the embargo with a cap of 890GL of general security water entitlements over five years in NSW. The catch is that includes water already purchased, which is 520GL, meaning about 370GL will be available for purchase between now and 2012-13, with purchases back-end loaded.
There’s another, far more complex aspect to the MoU. Governments will attempt to develop “water shepherding” arrangements for the movement of environmental flows through the MDB so that what is purchased at the top — for example, in the upper Darling — isn’t siphoned off along the way and makes it all the way to South Australia, subject to ground water and evaporation loss.
As Gregson notes, this will be a very difficult algorithm to develop, because most users in the Basin have water rights subject to either volumetric or river height indicators — ie. their entitlements are triggered when the river flow reaches a certain level. Some parts of the system are also unregulated, or include floodplains which are subject to different allocation processes.
The complexity lies in developing a protocol that avoids triggering entitlements when environmental flows are involved, while keeping them operational for other events.
“It’s not impossible but it will be very complex,” Gregson says.
He also wants irrigators to get access to water shepherding provisions for their own trading, so it isn’t confined to environmental flows.
There will also be a need for extra resources for monitoring on the ground to ensure “shepherding” actually occurs in the system rather than merely in hydrological models. Apparently the Commonwealth has committed to provide the extra resources for monitoring.
From the point of view of environmentalists and South Australians, by imposing a cap on further trading in NSW, the MoU simply perpetuates the dysfunctional management framework that has wreaked such havoc on the system in the first place. Penny Wong and her Parliamentary Secretary on water, Mike Kelly, might beg to differ, saying that at least environmental purchases can now proceed in NSW.
But Victoria and Queensland continue in their pig-headed refusal to cooperate in restoring the MDB to a semblance of health. They’re the real problems the Federal Government needs to deal with.
If the Opposition had someone with any semblance of a brain, he/she/they would be hammering the Murray-Darling for all it’s worth. This is a topic where there are votes to be won by the thousand, the Rudd Govt and the two States involved should be bloody ashamed of themseves for the carefree off handed way they are sitting on their hands and allowing this once icon of a waterway simply disappear, leaving mud, silt, dead birds, fish and plant life as a requiem.
If there was an Opoosition that actually cared, that actually could see past its absurd obsession with the stimulus packages and blocking legislation which one way or another will get passed, regardless of the Senate stonewalling, as proved already, then they would see and comprehend the whole country actually cares about the MD. Obviously its demise is not of serious interest to the fat cats in the Govt and Opposition. The whole disaster is a disgrace and Governments and Oppositions along its diminishing length stand condemned.
The Victorian Premier, John Brumby, has time after time proved to be a man of misdirected action, but his stubbornness is legendary.
His attitude about the tragedy of the MDB and the Victorian Premier John Brumby’s bloody mindedness is but one in a long list of things he has tackled.
The Black Friday bushfires which killed so many people and animals and wildlife could easily be blamed on the state Labor Government and it’s utter disregard of imposing laws to make developers build homes to a proper standard. Or of failing to force local councils to build proper roads suited for heavy trucks in new estates allowed in bushfire prone areas. Local councils even allowed cul-des-sacs to be constructed. Thus making it impossible for fire trucks to pass from one street to another.
Another prime example of John Brumby’s attention to the wrong detail was the discovery that the dams providing water to Melbourne were in many cases down to twenty-five percent of full, and that a city of four million people needed more water. Surprise surprise; we are only into our fifteenth year of drought!
Panic stations. Umm what to do? Apparently he thinks deeply on this problem. Which is odd. Why? His government has only been in power for eleven or so years. Ah ha, the answer! It is to drain the Thompson river in order to divert the water to Melbourne. How lucky are the local farmers? Not content with that, the decision is taken to build a desalination plant at one of Victoria’s last and fast disappearing wild beaches. They are the ones which don’t have all the sand chewed up and the sand gouged out by four-wheel drives. Places where native animals and birds abound. Sorry folks, people are far more important than a lot of silly old native fauna. It all brings employment to local areas and, if nothing else John Brumby is all about finding jobs for the workers.
Would there have been a logical answer to the problem of so many people and so little water? You bet. Why not make it mandatory for the owners of every building to construct and use the rain water that does fall? Why not indeed, it would be far cheaper and far more environmentally friendly. So quaint, so logical but not nearly employing the amount of people which John Brumby so resolutely protects.
We are now a city of four million people and climbing and as a ‘populate or perish’ man from way back John Brumby has begged people to come and live here. And instead of making it mandatory for city dwellings to go up, he encourages them to move out. Melbourne is one of the most spread out cities in the world. If I wanted to go to one of the really outer suburbs I would allow myself one and a half to two hours of driving to get there. BTW I live very close to the centre of Melbourne. If I lived in one of the outer suburbs I would have to allow myself three hours.
Why all this emphasis on driving? Well that’s one thing he hasn’t done. All these far flung suburbs have no infrastructure. How logical is that?
All of the above is testament to our beloved Premier’s tenacity and capacity to bugger up the Murray Darling Basin, along with everything else he has tackled.
Why does he behave like this? Because he can.
We live in a Rudd soft tyrannopia but Brumby doesn’t know.
However Venise lives in the comforting shadow of Prince Pete of Malvern and there is no reason for hyperbole. Besides…… Venise has never travelled to the outskirts of Melbourne.
Otherwise I largely agree.
I need a Bex and a lie down….
My tap is dry
JamesK: Hi there! But I’ve been to some far flung suburbs. Otherwise guilty as charged.
Cheers
Venise