"NO TIME FOR BEATING CHESTS" says WONG

Well I have not written for a while and am so fed up with Politicians doing nothing.

I would like to pose a question for Senator Wong - a resident of South Australia. If the good Penny owned a property in the Adelaide Hills and decided the lovely creek running through her property would solve all of her personal issues and dammed the creek. Dammed it so well that water very rarely flowed past her property.

Let me assure her that the laws of this state would instantly require removal of the dam or at least release of sufficient water to allow her creek to flow.

The fact that Cubbie Station holds 530,000 gigalitres of water on its own is stunning. That is the entire Water drawn for Irrigation in the State of South Australia. Let us not also forget that Cubbie is but one of these massive storage facilities now located at the top end of the Darling.

Also as per previous articles written here the University of NSW did a survey of the Murray Darling Basin and found over 2000kms of illegal Dams and levees throughout the system. Why are these not being forcibly removed.

The fact that Cubbie even has a value is largely due to the Queensland Government rushing through legislation five minutes before they handed control to the Federal Government simply to protect the evil that had already been done. Please the motherhood statements being uttered by the Queensland Premier I found rather cynical I am afraid.

Senator Wong there is a solution but it requires strong action from Government to ensure that everyone including the Aussie Battler gets a fair go.

Budget allocated hardly any new money for River Murray

The above is a headline from the Adelaide Advertiser and is available to read in the Shared Items alongside this blog. I remain absolutely aghast and it is time that the population of Australia started to deliver the message more aggressively.

Channels like the one that appear in the heading of this blog are literally covering the Murray Darling Basin in Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales. South Australia removed their Channels some 30 years ago. The saving in lost water from evaporation and seepage would indeed go a long way to reinstating environmental flow, as a minimum, to the River Systems. Infrastructure programs to put these channels into pipes, incentive programmes to encourage better farm practice and incentive programs to remove agriculture and horticulture that require flood irrigation techniques would go even further to correcting the problem.

The employment opportunities in creating these infrastructure programmes are enormous and the benefit to Australia's GDP even greater.

The dozen's of projects that have been presented to the Murray Darling Basin Authority, over decades, to further consider environmentally friendly Flood Mitigation Programmes from Northern Rivers that would again deliver more than enough water to the basin have fallen on deaf ears for too long.

We must bring this matter to the urgent attention of the Prime Minister, Senator Penny Wong and Peter Garrett MHR and it is time that they actually did something about fixing this crisis

Well Nick pulled it off - but it still only scratches the surface

You have to know I think this stand was quite good. The Federal Government has been conveniently avoiding this issue and Senator Sherry's little bleat we are handling it elsewhere does not cut the mustard. Well done Senator Xenophon at least we have some action.

It actually intrigues me that it was Senator Sherry who open fired on Nick Xenophon - surely it should have been Senator Penny Wong. Dear Ms Wong where is the longer term fix for this what strategy is taking so long and why can't we start capturing some of this damaging floodwater and firing it into the Murray Darling Basin and when are you going to take serious steps to rebalance the stupid overallocations in some of the upstream regions.

In the meantime in the face of the nation Senator Nick Xenophon has actually achieved something that has not happened ever - action on the River system

Green light for Murray-Darling management bill

So now the Bill has passed and according to Penny Wong "We will get on with the work of making sure that authority is up and running, so we can start the important work of preparing the first ever basin-wide plan which will include for the first time a cap based on science."

I guess my concern remains as to the undoing of the illegal levies etc that have been reported on. The over allocation that has gone on under State Government controls. It would seem to me that there is not a lot of time to procrastinate here and would ask the Federal Government moves much faster to ensure an equitable solution for all while the longer term plan is laid out.

And now the Greens want to add the CSIRO

The Greens are astounded why CSIRO has not been directly involved in this disaster.I am too - why hasn't our leading Scientific Research body been incorporated in this process. Indeed why haven't "the Wentworth Group" been included. The cluster of talent that is just not being utilised is criminal.

The important part of this is nothing has been done. A lot of the land that is under irrigation was originally part of soldier settlement programs and we encouraged them to grow Citrus and Grapes etc. Now we choose to desert these families and destroy a lifetime of work.

What has happened is Governments have continued to rape the Golden Goose and have significantly over allocated the River resource. We have allowed bulk storage of water that has now shut down River flow but still there are massive amounts of water being collected and stored at the headwater.

The "johnny come lately's" in the upper reaches of the Darling etc who have only in the relatively recent past been storing massive amounts of water in new dams and have really changed the whole face of the river system and the agriculture of these previous pastoral only regions.

Please let's not just add another layer of administrative static now. Let the water go from these massive storage facilities and let people along the river use what allocation they really need to survive. The surplus will fix the environmental issues and proper management of allocation can be installed if only the Federal Government will act instead of continuing to pay lip service to the issues at hand.

I would hate to consider the mental health issues that this continued "head in the sand attitude" is causing and wonder if statistics of family breakdown and suicide can be directly attributed to this disaster are being kept.

Political tokenism is way past its use by date and action must happen NOW!!!!

The Federal Government to spend another $400million

So again Senator Wong announces a further $400 million to buy back water. She hopes that it will add to the already acquired 39 billion litres of water already acquired.

I am not sure why Penny keeps talking in Billions of litres when the normal nomenclature along the River is megalitres.A cynical man might believe that talking billions makes it sound lots. So 39,000 megalitres have been acquired which is only about one third of what is required. $400million what will it buy and will it only force up the price for those who are trying to survive downstream.

The upstream problems are mainly caused by Bulk Storage in dams away from the River. This problem is still not being addressed. Any kind of drawing that is holding water in Dams away from the river for future proofing must be stopped. If the crop protection requires that kind of mass storage then it should not be allowed. Draw water as it passes by - the River has already put in place locks etc to assist in flow management and we the taxpayers have paid for all of that infrastructure.

Let the water in these private storage facilities go - take back control of allocations and the irrigators and towns who require water can then draw what they need as it passes - frankly capturing water, with as much as three years supply being held in some of these privately owned storage facilities, apart from being an environmental disaster is simply un-Australian. The need to manage water only as it flows by and travels the length of the river I am sure will give us back an appropriate amount of water for now. Then we look at supplemental flows like flood mitigation of Northern Rivers.

Federal Government Control is essential

Senator Penny Wong again comes out and says that a single controlling body must occur. The Federal Government has the power constitutionally to take that control in the National interest. There is sufficient precedent available in the takeover and control of the Franklin River in Tasmania many years ago.

Queensland comes out and defends the amount of irrigation water that has drawn this year because of the seasonal rains that have given the upper reaches significant inflows. I actually have no problem with the drawing of the water. The problem is that it has been drawn and is now being stored in artificial dams and we are told that some organisations have taken up to three years supply into their storage.

Reported (a University of NSW report)some months ago in this blog there are over 2400kms of illegal dams and levees in the NSW portion of the basin, this unnatural capture is wrong.

That is outrageous, the evaporation alone from those storage facilities is very likely to be more than the requirements to supply downstream needs.

If it flows by take what you need, storing it and allowing environmental disaster further down is the abhorrent part.

Dear Senator Wong please exercise your powers and allow the river to run and allow irrigators to use what is there while it is there. Storage of the magnitude that exists is foolish and selfish.

Communities Die - while Kevin,Penny and Mike Fiddle

So the good Karlene gets handed the bitter pill of advising that a third of the Irrigation Communities could die if the dire situation does not change.

So after decades of inaction what are we still seeing, INACTION.

I would like to have one of our expert economists tell me exactly what the loss to GDP is going to be with the loss of Riverland and Lower Murray Production. What is it going to cost Australia and the state of South Australia. I fear the number might put yet another shiver into the future of the Australian Economy.

When are we actually going to see some action on returning wasted water to the River. Just buying water alone sure is not going to fix the problem - there has to be serious inroads into better water management NOW.

So put down the Violin and do something.