Showing posts with label water policy politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water policy politics. Show all posts

Tuesday 12 April 2022

Dunoon Dam proposal debate continues to concern many in Northern New South Wales


Echo NetDaily, 8 April 2022:


A locally-based NSW Nationals MLC was recently pressured over his lack of consultation with Indigenous custodians regarding the contentious Dunoon Dam proposal.


According to the February 24 Hansard transcript of NSW Parliament, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Ben Franklin, was asked by Greens MP, Cate Faehrmann, if he had attempted to meet with the Widjabul Wia-bal people around their concerns about the impending destruction of 25 sacred sites, ‘should the Dunoon Dam go ahead’.


He replied in part, ‘The short answer is that I have not met with them yet. I do not think they have reached out to ask for a visit. I may be wrong, but I do not think that is the case. Of course, I would be happy to meet with them. I am happy to meet with any Aboriginal organisation or community across this State as much as I possibly can if my diary will allow’.


Mr Franklin also refused to pre-empt the outcome of any meeting, and said that, ‘We must genuinely collaborate and listen to their aims and ambitions and concerns in order to address them effectively’.


I am happy to meet with them


He went on: ‘Can we do that in every situation? No, because there are a range of competing interests within government and they must all be balanced. But I make the commitment that I am happy to meet with them’.


He added there was no plan on the table for the Dunoon Dam, ‘though there has certainly been discussion, and a different position has been promulgated by Rous County Council after the recent local government elections, which may lead to other actions. At the moment there is no plan on the table’. for the Government’s consideration. When there is one, obviously that will need to be considered’……


Ben Franklin has been a Nationals MLC for the last 7 years, first in the NSW Baird Government, then the Berejiklian Government and finally in the Perrottet Government. He has been Minister for Aboriginal Affairs as well as Minister for the Arts since December 2021. These are his first ministerial roles.


Despite living in Northern New South Wales, Mr. Franklin has a spotty voting history when it comes to protecting the aesthetic, environmental, cultural, social & economic values of local communities against the interests of industry lobby groups and party political donors.


On 4 February 2022 in the NSW Legislative Council as he danced around the issues of strong opposition of the Widjabul Wia-bal people to the widespread inundation of sacred land in order to create a second dam on Rocky Creek, along with the loss of 25 ancestral stone burial sites, he clearly stated that he was; “a very proud member of a resident of the northern rivers region of New South Wales and member of the National Party. As such, I understand the critical importance of building water infrastructure as well…..that we must look at what we need to do to build water and other infrastructure in this State”.


Mr. Franklin further stated that; “we must also be incredibly sympathetic to the concerns of Aboriginal people”.


Given his advocacy on sensitive issues often does not survive when it comes to the vote he casts in the Upper House, I am not all that hopeful that he will genuinely assist the Widjabul Wia-bal people to protect Country.


One suspects that he is likely to be more closely aligned with Kevin Hogan the Nationals MP for Page, one of only two federal electorates in the Northern Rivers, who clearly favours dam proposals.


Friday 25 March 2022

There is political madness in the air as barely hidden agendas make a mockery of the ongoing trauma in communities hit by NSW Floods February-March 2022

 

Desperate to eliminate all discussion of climate change from the public debate ahead of the federal election campaign, the Morrison Government has given the nod for the CSIRO to be granted est. $10 million dollars via the federal National Recovery and Resilience Agency (NRRA) to study how to manage floodwater within the Wilson and Richmond river catchments with definitely no mention of funding for national, state or regional mitigation measures to tackle for the root cause of extreme flooding events - climate change. 


The Coordinator General of the NRRA, Shane Stone, is reported as stating that flood management study is expected to take up to two years.


According to one National Party member of the Morrison Government, Page MP Kevin Hogan (middle with Steven Krieg on his left), the results of this study are a done deal: "For too long, previous councils have debated the merits of flood mitigation. Today that debate is done. For everyone who is against engineering solutions to flood mitigation, the debate is over."   


Predictably, National Party-supported Lismore Mayor Steven Krieg blindly echoes this pre-empting of the CSIRO's study report while on the same breath assuring the region that is not what he is doing.


This bold pre-emptive statement hides a multitude of misconceptions about the function of a dam, because the primary function of a dam can be water sustainability/storage or flood mitigation.


Water sustainability/storage requires a dam to be constantly around 90 per cent capacity to fully meet its primary function and to justify the many millions spent on its construction and ongoing maintenance.


Flood mitigation requires a dam to always be almost empty and every time its water level rises significantly that water needs to be released back into the river system that feeds it in order to maintain flood mitigation capacity.


Trying to combine both functions in the same dam on a floodplain would require an enormous, over-designed dam built at prohibitive financial and environmental cost. A constant looming presence in the landscape likely to give downstream farmers and homeowners more than a few troubled nights.


And let's face it, there is actual income to be made out of water storage dams not empty dams, so the temptation for a gradual shift in purpose from flood mitigation to water sustainability/storage would be there from the very beginning - with the potential for lethal consequences during mega floods or a multiple flood year in the catchment when there is insufficient capacity remaining to retain all the floodwater reaching such a repurposed dam.


There is already renewed talk of damming and diverting water from NSW coastal rivers inland or across the NSW-Qld border and it appears that nothing would please the Perrottet Government more than finding an excuse for inter-catchment water transfer to satisfy the needs of rapacious councils, property developers and irrigators outside of the Northern Rivers region, as well as the wants of that unhealthy coterie of political donors/dodgy water traders. 


This motley collection of National Party ideologues and mindless political agitators need to stop acting as a wrecking ball and build on local knowledge and expertise in order to genuinely assess all the solutions being offered up Lismore and the Northern Rivers region.



BACKGROUND 

There are thirty-six signatories to this document sponsored by the Climate Council of Australia. 


MARCH 2022 Statement From A... by clarencegirl


https://www.scribd.com/document/566391016/MARCH-2022-Statement-From-Australian-Mayors-And-Councillors-Extreme-weather-is-hurting-Australia-and-our-communities-are-paying-the-price


Council Magazine, 7 March 2022:


The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) has called for a targeted $200 million per year disaster mitigation fund, for local governments to address the impacts of climate change and help increase Australia’s resiliency.


ALGA President, Linda Scott, said the Association is seeking the disaster mitigation fund as well as an extra $200 million over four years for a Local Government Climate Response Partnership Fund.


In 2014, the Productivity Commission recommended increased investment in disaster mitigation, but currently less than five per cent of disaster funding in Australia goes towards mitigation and community resilience measures,” Cr Scott said.


We appreciate the support that has quickly been provided by states and the Commonwealth to households and communities impacted by these devastating floods in Queensland and New South Wales.


However, we need greater investment in disaster mitigation and climate change adaptation to reduce the severity and impact of future natural disasters.


The current legislation allows for $200 million per year to be spent from the Federal Government’s $4.8 billion Emergency Management Fund.


However, since 2019 the Government has only committed $150 million in total from this fund.


This month’s Federal Budget is an opportunity for the Commonwealth to provide additional assistance that will help protect our communities from increasing disaster events.


Investing in mitigation makes economic sense, and significantly reduces the costs governments incur during recovery.”


Cr Scott said ALGA is also advocating for a Local Government Climate Response Partnership Fund of $200 million over four years to help councils address the impacts of climate change in their communities.


Across our nation, we are seeing floods and fires that are more severe, and more destructive,” Cr Scott said.


Providing our councils with funding to address the impacts of climate change in our communities will help us increase our resilience to future natural disasters.”


The Guardian, 23 March 2022:


Lismore council has been gripped by in-fighting over whether it should make references to “climate change” following the flood disaster and a decision to pause its work on flood mitigation despite warnings the “optics” of doing so were “not good”.


The disaster-ravaged town is still in the early stages of recovering from an unprecedented 14.4-metre flood, which wiped out thousands of homes and businesses and brought Lismore to its knees.


On Tuesday, in a late-night sitting, Lismore council proposed a message of thanks to volunteers and the community for their efforts in the immediate response and clean-up effort.


It included a line saying the council “acknowledges we are likely to experience further disasters of this nature as climate change continues to escalate”.


The words “climate change” prompted a reaction from four councillors, led by independent councillor Big Rob, who attempted to have the reference removed and replaced with a line saying “we are definitely going to experience further disasters of this nature”.


Rob – who says he does not deny climate change but likes to “stir up lefties” – said he did not think a message of community support was the right place to make “political” statements about climate change.


That motion was about thanking people, not being political about climate change,” he said…….


The effort to delete the reference to climate change failed. But it rankled other councillors, including Greens councillor Adam Guise, who first proposed the climate change reference be added.


They tried to couch it as not politicising it,” Guise said . “But this is the whole thing about climate change, it’s not political, it’s science.”


The dispute came amid further divisions within council over a decision to halt the work of a key committee working to improve flood mitigation measures in Lismore.


That occurred despite councillors acknowledging the “optics” of pausing the flood mitigation committee so soon after a disaster were “not good”.


The council has also sacked members of the Lismore community who were on a community reference group advising council on flood mitigation.


On Tuesday, at 11pm, the council decided to pause the work of the floodplain committee to wait for more information from CSIRO, which has been given $10m to explore flood mitigation measures in the region.


Lismore council decided it should hold off doing any further work on flood mitigation of its own until it understood what CSIRO was doing.


But councillor Vanessa Ekins, who chairs the committee, warned that could take months. She said pausing the committee was “very dangerous ground” and would not look good to Lismore residents.


We have just been through a big flood, we are still experiencing that and for us to send a message out there that we are pausing work that we have been working really hard on for years until we hear what the CSIRO are doing … they might take six months to tell us what they’re doing,” she said.


This could take a really, really long time and meanwhile our community has no guidance from us, we’re not doing anything, we’ve paused the consultation we’re currently engaged in until someone else tells us what they’re doing.”


She said the decision was “absolutely outrageous”.


It’s really important that our flood plain committee continues the work that it’s been doing for the last five years on mitigating the impacts of flooding on the CBD and residences,” she said. “We were in the middle of a consultation process with members of the community about various options.”


Others were furious that community members had been sacked from the committee so soon after the floods.


We had community members on that committee with five years’ experience and expertise in understanding the mitigation options that were before us,” councillor Elly Bird said. “To throw all of that experience away, I don’t support it.”


Tuesday 22 February 2022

And the tale of Rous County Council decision making under new pro-dam majority continues......


Echo, 21 February 2022: 


During last week’s Rous County Council (RCC) meeting, Cr Big Rob spoke of contact he had with Professor Stuart White regarding the proposed Dunoon Dam. 


 Professor White is the Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS in Sydney where he leads a team of researchers who create change towards sustainable futures through independent, project-based research. 


 With over twenty years experience in sustainability research, Professor White’s work focuses on achieving sustainability outcomes at least cost for a range of government, industry and community clients across Australia and internationally. 


The Echo spoke to Professor White who made a late video submission to Rous that missed the deadline. A representative of Rous said it was too late to be screened in public access and was ‘forwarded to all Councillors on the morning of the Council meeting for their info’. The rep also mistakingly thought the video was a submission from the Northern Rivers Water Alliance who already had a space in Public Access


Rous County Council meeting 


During the meeting Cr Rob did not give Councillors all of the information he received from Professor White. 


At the meeting, Cr Rob said: ‘I circulated an email overnight relating to the experts that have been relied on – Professor Stuart White for example. You know, his position was the cost and when I made inquiries with Professor White, he finally agreed that yes, that dam should be considered. So if you take the cost out of it, then his position [is] all options on the table, the dam must be considered because that is one of the options.’ 


The Echo asked Professor White about his conversation with Cr Rob because Cr Rob’s comments seemed to be at odds with the information Professor White has been giving other interested parties. 


‘I have not spoken to Cr Big Rob,’ said Professor White. ‘I only had email correspondence. 


‘My position on the Dunoon Dam is clear and I’ve been public about it: it is too expensive, too risky, not useful for the purpose it is intended for, and not needed within the planning horizon. This is before considering the environmental and Aboriginal heritage risks.’ 


Time to rule out dam 


Professor White said that this does not mean the Dunoon Dam, or any supply option should not be considered and investigated alongside other options. ‘It is just that under any reasonable analysis it would be rejected. The proponents have already had a chance to make their case, at great public expense, and my view is that this case has not been made, so it is now reasonable to rule the Dunoon Dam option out.’ 


‘My understanding of the decision by Rous last year was to reject it primarily due to the Aboriginal heritage considerations, which are of course very important and remain very important.’ 


The Echo does not know if any Rous Councillors saw this submission before they voted 6 to 2 to put the dam back on the table.  [my yellow highlighting]


BACKGROUND


NORTH COAST VOICES, FRIDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2022 



Friday 18 February 2022

Rous County Council and that Dunoon Dam proposal now risen from the dead

 

In 2014 Rous County Council (RCC) adopted its Future Water Strategy which recommended detailed investigations to assess the suitability of increased use of groundwater as a new water source, and if groundwater was not suitable, investigate complementary options such as water reuse and desalination.


After completion of this investigation Rous produced the original Future Water Project 2060 which did not prioritise groundwater use, reuse of already available water or building a desalination plant/s.


Instead it chose another option – the 50 gigalitre Dunoon Dam, with the concept design indicating an initial capital cost of approx. $220 million.


In considering options for the future, Rous County Council conducted extensive assessments to weigh up environment, social and economic impacts. The result of these assessments indicate the Dunoon Dam is the preferred long-term water supply option when compared to demand management and water conservation, groundwater sources and water re-use”.


It is worth noting that the proposed Dunoon Dam would be the second dam on Rocky Creek thus further fragmenting this watercourse. The first water storage is Rocky Creek Dam which will continue to operate if the Dunoon Dam was built. Rocky Creek Dam does not have an outlet structure so it does not provide releases for downstream flows. [NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, 2020]


By 2020 this incredibly flawed second dam plan still relied on the widely discredited ‘offset’ scheme as a workaround for the widespread level of environmental destruction, significant biodiversity & species local population loss and, for the drowning of land sacred to the Widjabul Wia-bal People and the desecration of highly significant cultural sites.


Rous authorized preliminary investigation of the Dunoon Dam project in mid-2020 allocating a $100,000 operating budget.


However, the Widjabul Wia-bal, local residents in Lismore Shire and many people in the three other shires within Rous County Council (Byron, Ballina & Richmond Valley) remained concerned with Rous’ choice – the Future Water Project 2060 Public Exhibition Outcomes revealed that 90% of the 1,298 submissions received by 9 September 2020 expressed concerns about the Dunoon Dam proposal.


In March 2021 Rous was reconsidering its earlier Dunoon Dam decision and by 21 July it had voted 5 to 3 to remove the Dunoon Dam from its Future Water Project 2060. At that time a second public exhibition from 1 April to 24 May 2021, this time of the revised Future Water Project 2060, was put in place which resulted in an RCC digital file of supporting submissions 1,754 pages long and confirmed that voiced public opinion was still against building the Dunoon Dam.


By 16 December 2021 Rous County Council had authorised “the General Manager to cease all work on the Dunoon Dam and provide a report on the orderly exit from Dunoon Dam as an option in the future water project, including revocation of zoning entitlements and disposal of land held for the purpose of the proposed Dunoon Dam”.


There the matter should have rested, but after the December 2021 local government elections there was a changing of the guard at Rous Water and six of the eight current sitting RCC councillors are pro-dam.


This led to the unedifying sight on 16 February 2022, of Rous County Council by a vote of 6 to 2 vote reinserting the Dunoon Dam proposal into the revised Future Water Project 2060. No genuine forewarning of what that first RCC meeting of 2022 would contain, no prior consultation with Widjabul Wia-ba elders on the Item 12.1 motion, no community consultation.


The community scrambled to respond. So on the day RCC did hear objections to Item 12.1 from Hugh Nicholson, a previous Chair of Rous Country Council and Friends of the Koala representative Ros Irwin.


A young Widjabul Wia-ba woman, Skye Robertsaddressed the councillors as a “custodian” of the land. She spoke with conviction, determination and, clearly informed all present that: the proposed dam was sited within the large tract of land between three ancient mountains and that land was “sacred land” to all the Widjabul Wia-ba; this included Channon Gorge, the waters that ran through it and the wider dam site; the stone burial mounds which would be submerged by dam waters were part of the circle of cultural connection between land and people; men’s places & women’s places were on land to be flooded; and that land connects to living culture.


The message she carried for her grandmother and mother fell on predominately deaf ears and it was ‘ugly Australia’ which voted the dam back into future planning on that Wednesday in February.


Rous County Council already has before it the Ainsworth Heritage Dunoon Dam: Preliminary Cultural Heritage Impact Assessment for Rous Water, May 2013” which can be read in digital form or downloaded from:

https://issuu.com/jwtpublishing/docs/ainsworth-heritage-preliminary-cultural-heritage-i.


It also has before it the SMEC “Dunoon Dam Terrestrial Ecology Impact Assessment, Prepared for Rous Water November 2011”. An assessment of which can be found at:

https://waternorthernrivers.org/ecological-impact/


For a brief summary of some of the technical flaws in the Dunoon Dam preliminary investigation:


Dunoon Dam: 4 Risks & Considerations by Water Expert Professor Stuart White - Feb 2022

 

Wednesday 18 August 2021

WATER IS LIFE: policy failures at Australian federal and state level just keep rolling on

 

The Guardian, 3 August 2021:













The Barwon-Darling is the main tributary for the Darling and was the focus of allegations in 2017 of water theft and users taking more than their allocations. Photograph: Mark Evans/Getty Images



New South Wales has been found to have exceeded its water allocations for 2019-20 in the Barwon-Darling catchment, one of the main cotton-growing areas of the state, raising new questions about the effectiveness of the state’s water enforcement rules.



The Barwon-Darling is the main tributary for the Darling and was the focus of the 2017 Four Corners report which raised allegations of water theft, pumps being tampered with and water users taking more than their allocations.



It led to a number of reports, prosecutions and an overhaul by NSW of its compliance regime.



But in the first year of compliance reporting, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority found NSW had exceeded what are known as the sustainable diversion limits (SDLs) in three areas – the Barwon-Darling watercourse, the Upper Macquarie alluvium and the Lower Murrumbidgee deep groundwater catchments.



The state claimed there was a “reasonable excuse” for exceeding the limits, and that it was adhering to its draft water resource plans for all three.



The MDBA accepted that as a reasonable and valid explanation for two of the areas, but not for the Barwon Darling.



The MDBA found that NSW did not operate in a manner fully consistent with the submitted water resource plan in the 2019–20 water year for the Barwon–Darling,” the report said.



All other states were found to be compliant.



The NSW independent MP Justin Field said this was another black mark against the NSW Nationals on water management.



Communities will be furious that water management has been non-compliant over a period which included the end of the worst drought on record and the first flush event. To have extractions exceeding limits over such a critical period raises serious questions about who benefited from the failures to properly implement water sharing rules.



These findings make it all the more important that downstream targets to protect the environment and communities are included as part of any floodplain harvesting licensing regulations in the Northern Basin, including in the Barwon-Darling.”



Read the full article here.



On 5 August 2021 the Australian Government's Office of the Inspector-General of Water Compliance (IGWC) became operational. Responsibility for enforcing compliance with the Basin Plan now resides with the IGWC.


Image:IGWC

The IGWC is described as an independent regulator and its Interim Inspector-General of Water Compliance is former NSW Police officer & former NSW Nationals Member for Dubbo from 2011-2019, Troy Grant (left).


As NSW Police Minister Mr. Grant did not always obey the road rules and in his two year and one month stint as NSW Deputy Premier he failed to impress. Between April 2011 and  2019 Grant was a minister nine times over - with three tenues lasting less than six months.



In 2019 he did not re-contest his seat at the state election and in 2020 he resigned from the National Party of Australia.



His appointment as Interim Inspector-General was not universally approved when announced in 2020:


 They’re not even pretending anymore,” Nature Conservation Council Chief Executive Chris Gambian said.

Troy Grant was in charge when some of the worst policy decisions that favour big irrigators at the expense of communities, farmers and nature downstream.

Fresh from stinging criticism from ICAC about water management in NSW, the federal government has appointed the fox to be in charge of the hen house.


Thursday 29 July 2021

How does one know that a particular water security solution is probably a bad idea? It is supported by the NSW National Party

 

Rous County Council is the regional water supply authority providing water in bulk to the Council areas of: Ballina (excluding Wardell); Byron (excluding Mullumbimby); Lismore (excluding Nimbin); and Richmond Valley (excluding land to the west of Coraki). A population of around 100,000 is serviced by this water supply system with the actual area of operations being approximately 3,000 sq kms.


Its constituent councils have at least 83,051 person who are eligible to vote in local government elections.


On the basis that allegedly around 10 per cent of of the district population and, 3 out of a total of 43 councillors in the 4 constituent local government areas, supported further investigation of the now rejected Dunoon Dam proposal, NSW Nationals MLA for Clarence & Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry Chris Gulaptis is yelling about the democratic process.


The Daily Telegraph, 26 July 2021:


ROUS County Council needs to use some common sense in developing its future water strategy according to Clarence MP Chris Gulaptis.


Mr Gulaptis, who was also the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, said he was disappointed the majority of Rous councillors ignored the overwhelming wishes of the community at Wednesday’s extraordinary meeting and abandoned investigations into Dunoon Dam as an option.


Councillors voted 5-3 to keep Dunoon Dam out of the region’s future water strategy and instead tap into groundwater aquifers in Alstonville and Tyagarah, which Mr Gulaptis said the most recent studies showed was very limited.


I applaud councillors Robert Mustow, Sandra Humphrys and Sharon Cadwallader for supporting the wishes of over 11,000 petitioners and written submissions who were in favour of the Dunoon Dam proposal being further investigated,” he said.


The five opposing councillors showed a complete disregard to the community consultation process and the community has every right to lose confidence in them and the democratic process. It quite rightly is a slap in the face to local democracy.


Water is one of the most basic elements we need to survive, and I acknowledge the vision of past Rous councillors who recognised this and purchased land for a dam to secure the water needs for a growing population.


I find it staggering the majority of current councillors are prepared to ignore this longstanding strategy along with disregarding the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the community whose submissions supported investigating the dam as an option.


I acknowledge that desalination, recycling and extraction from the aquifers is an option, but so too is the dam.


I strongly believe all options should all be on the table, including the dam, for investigation to assure the community that Rous has been thorough in arriving at the best option for the region’s future water needs. “It is often said that local government is the government closest to the people. Clearly that is not the case of the five elected councillors in this instance, who are ignoring the will of more than 10,000 constituents.”


Wednesday 14 July 2021

Pathetically low fines for non-compliance with rules enforced by the Natural Resources Access Regulator (NRAR) leaves Murray-Darling Basin irrigators in NSW laughing all the way to the bank with those dollars earned from what is essentially water theft

 

https://www.mdba.gov.au/importance-murray-darling-basin/where-basin

The State of New South Wales is currently not in drought. However, its rivers often have highly variable water flows so it was not surprising to find the morning of Tuesday 13 July 2021 revealing that WaterNSW State Overview real time data record showed that 14 of the state's rivers were flowing at less than 20%. While 15 of the state's principal dams registered volume levels at between 31.4% and 95.9% of capacity, with another 3 registering over 100% of recommended capacity.


Some of those rivers and dams fall within Murray Darling Basin boundaries.


Apparently - even in time of relative water plenty - healthy rivers, environmental water flows and intergenerational equity are not part of the business plan for many of the irrigators growing cotton, almonds, rice, fruit, vegetables, grape vines and other food & pasture crops - how else does one explain this?


The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 July 2021:


Nearly half of the biggest irrigators in NSW have made no effort to install meters that comply with new water laws more than six months after they became mandatory, an audit has found.


The NSW Natural Resources Access Regulator found that 45 per cent of large pumps that draw from rivers and creeks were not using compliant meters to measure how much water was taken, contrary to new laws designed to prevent water theft.


Only 23 per cent were fully compliant with a further third on their way to compliance based on evidence provided by way of invoices, product orders and emails confirming validation appointments.


NRAR’s chief regulatory officer Grant Barnes said there had been “a positive shift” in compliance rates since its desktop audit in April, which found two-thirds of irrigators were non-compliant, but there was still more work to be done with those water users who had neither installed the meters nor made an effort to do so.


For us, this is about ensuring those water users who have done the right thing and have complied with the regulations get a fair go, and so these results will be disappointing to those people,” Mr Barnes said. “[Compliance] is also important to those who recognise the importance of a social licence for irrigators.”


Individuals who have shown no effort to comply face fines of up to $750 and irrigation companies face $1500 fines.


The pumps in question here are gigantic, half-meter diameter straws that have the capacity to suck the lifeblood out of our rivers.”

Independent MP Justin Field


The meters were a central recommendation from the 2017 Murray Darling Basin Compliance Review, which found irrigator compliance in NSW and Queensland was “bedevilled by patchy metering, the challenges of measuring unmetered take and the lack of real-time, accurate water accounts”…...


Read the full article here.


Friday 19 February 2021

The National Water Reform Draft Report has been released - now is the time for concerned Australians to speak up and loudly


If there is one thing that Australians know well by now, it is that state and federal governments frequently take from major reports only those points and recommendations which fit with their own political world view and/or those that can be easily distorted to meet the expectations of their party's financial backers - thus ensuring that little positive change occurs .


Water is the basis of life, without it communities perish and nations go into decline. That is one of the hard facts facing Australia as the impacts of climate change start to bite.


It is time for people to stand up in defence of this country's river and ground water systems and make sure governments understand that the environmental, economic and cultural vandalism they have supported in the past will no longer be tolerated in the present or the future. 



Australian Government, Productivity Commission:


National Water Reform Draft report 


This draft report was released on 11 February 2021. This draft report assesses the progress of the Australian, State and Territory governments towards achieving the objectives and outcomes of the National Water Initiative (NWI), and provides practical advice on future directions for national water reform. 


You are invited to examine the draft report and to make a written submission or brief comment by Wednesday 24 March 2021. 


 Make a submission or Make a brief comment 


The final report is expected to be handed to the Australian Government by the end of June 2021.

Download the draft report


The Conversation, 11 February 2021:


Most Australians know all too well how precious water is. Sydney just experienced a severe drought, while towns across New South Wales and Queensland ran out of drinking water. Under climate change, the situation will become more dire, and more common. 


It wasn’t meant to be this way. In 2004, federal, state and territory governments signed up to the National Water Initiative. It was meant to secure Australia’s water supplies through better governance and plans for sustainable use across industry, environment and the community. 


But a report by the Productivity Commission released today says the policy must be updated. It found the National Water Initiative is not fit for the challenges of climate change, a growing population and our changing perceptions of how we value water. 


The report’s findings matter to all Australians, whether you live in a city or a drought-ravaged town. If governments don’t manage water better, on our behalf, then entire communities may disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to degrade. It’s time for a change.


The report acknowledges progress in national water reform, and says Australia’s allocation of water resources has improved. But the commission makes clear there’s still much to be done, including: 


  • making water infrastructure projects a critical part of the National Water Initiative 


  • explicitly recognising how climate change threatens water-sharing agreement between states, users, towns, agriculture and the environment 


  • more meaningful recognition of Indigenous rights to water delivering adequate drinking water quality to all Australians, including those in regional and remote communities, especially during drought 


  • all states committing to drought management plans.

Read the full article here.


The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 February 2021:


A new national water reform report is inundated with positivity. But a closer look leaves you with a sinking feeling.


A glance at the draft report on national water reform from the Productivity Commission reminds me of the repeated judgment from old Mr Grace, the doddering owner of the department store in Are You Being Served? as he headed for the door: "You've all done very well!"


Its review of the progress of the National Water Initiative signed by the federal and state governments in 2004 - encompassing agreements on the Murray-Darling Basin - is terribly polite and relentlessly upbeat.


Apparently, governments have made "good progress" in having "largely achieved" their reform commitments. All that remains is just the need for a teensy-weensy bit of "policy renewal".


This mild-mannered stuff and congratulatory tone bear no resemblance to my memories of meetings of angry farmers railing against stupid greenies and other city slickers; of their insistence that the immediate needs of irrigators and irrigation towns along the river take priority over the river system's ultimate survival; of state governments' insistence on favouring their own irrigators over those in states further down the river; of federal and state National Party ministers happy to slip farmers a quiet favour, turning a blind eye to blatant infringements of the rules; of federal Labor ministers who, even with no seats to lose in the region, were unwilling to make themselves unpopular by standing up for the rivers' future.


I remember that the Howard government spent billions helping individual farmers make their irrigation systems more resistant to evaporation and seepage when all the benefits went to the farmer and none to the river system.


I remember all the infighting between government water agencies, and the mass fish kills during the recent drought in NSW and Queensland, for which the managers of the system accepted no responsibility.


Fortunately, reporters are adept at ignoring all the happy flannel up the front of government reports and finding the carefully hidden bad bits. And we have the assistance of water experts, including Professor Quentin Grafton, of the Australian National University, whose summary of the report in The Conversation is headed: "Our national water policy is outdated, unfair and not fit for climate challenges."


"If governments don't manage water better ... entire communities may disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to degrade," he says.


The report's proposal to make "water infrastructure developments" a much larger part of the National Water Initiative is a critical way to keep governments honest. For years, state and federal governments have used taxpayers' dollars to pay for farming water infrastructure that largely benefits big corporate irrigators, Grafton says.


Last year the Morrison government announced a further $2 billion for its Building 21st Century Water Infrastructure project. Such megaprojects, he says, perpetuate the myth that Australia - the driest inhabited continent on Earth - can be "drought-proofed".


When governments signed the original initiative in 2004, they agreed to ensure investments in infrastructure would be both economically viable and ecologically sustainable. But many projects appear to be neither.


The report notes, for example, that building the Dungowan Dam in NSW means "any infrastructure that improves reliability for one user will affect water availability for others". The "prospect of 'new' water is illusory". Projects that aren't economically viable or ecologically sustainable can "burden taxpayers with ongoing costs, discourage efficient water use" and create long-lived impacts on communities and the environment", the report warns.


Equally disturbing is that billions of dollars for water infrastructure are presently targeted primarily at the agriculture and mining industries, while communities in desperate need of clean drinking water miss out, Grafton says.


Luckily, the report isn't so house trained as to avoid mentioning the gorilla the Morrison government prefers not to notice. There's a lot about the consequences of climate change. It says droughts will likely become more intense and frequent and, in many places, water will become scarce.


In Grafton's summary, the report says planning provisions were inadequate to deal with both the millennium drought and the recent drought in Eastern Australia. The 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan, for instance, took no account of climate change when determining how much water to take from waterways.


The present federal government actually dismantled the National Water Commission in 2015, so we no longer have a resourced, well-informed agency to "mark the homework" and make sure the reforms were being implemented as agreed, Grafton says.


In 2007, the worst year of the millennium drought - and the year John Howard feared he'd lose the election if he didn't match Labor's promise to introduce an emissions trading scheme - Howard remarked that "in a protracted drought, and with the prospect of long-term climate change, we need radical and permanent change".


Professor Grafton says we're still waiting for that change. "If Australia is to be prosperous and liveable into the future, governments must urgently implement water reform."