Murray Darling Basin Plan - an act of sabotage

I am back from up the country, up the country where I went
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have shattered many idols out along the dusty track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses - and I'm glad that I am back.
I believe the Southern poets' dream will not be realised
Till the plains are irrigated and the land is humanised.
Henry Lawson, Up the Country, 1892

The early explorers and poets saw inland Australia very differently from the way we do today. Lawson expressed shock at its harshness and desolation, its “burning wastes and barren soils”, its “wild, rain swept wildernesses”, even the “gaunt and haggard women who live alone and work like men”.

Anyone who has lived and worked in drought stricken western New South Wales over the last few years will immediately identify with the sentiments expressed by our pioneers.

It gets tough, bloody tough.

No wonder the early settlers had a dream of irrigating the inland and turning a landscape with 13 inches of rainfall, growing rough scrub and running a handful of sheep, into a food bowl that supported communities and helped a young country become self reliant.

The dream became a reality with the Snowy Mountains Scheme, built between 1949 and 1974, consisting of 16 major dams; seven power stations; a pumping station; and 225 kilometres of tunnels, pipelines and aqueducts. It diverts water from the mountains through two tunnel systems, generating hydro electricity and regulating river flows in the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers.

Today, under the National Water Initiative, the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is tasked with developing a Basin Plan containing Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDLs) for all of the rivers in the Murray Darling Basin. The Guide to the Draft Plan, released on October 8th, proposed SDLs which if implemented would see up to 4,000GL of water removed from productive use, or cuts of 27 per cent to 37 per cent of water allocations across the Basin.

In the towns that grew up on water from the Snowy Scheme, this is considered an act of sabotage.

Interestingly, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was spruiking the Snowy at the Labor Party’s “Light on the Hill” address last month. It would never be built today, by her government. On August 10 she promised to buy back whatever water the MDBA told her was necessary for river health. At $2,500 per megalitre, that’s effectively a $10 billion blank cheque. The PM did not mention regional Australia, agriculture, food or rural communities.

The Murray Darling Basin Board was appointed two years into the term of the last government by the previous Water Minister Penny Wong. Senator Wong showed a disrespect for farmers that was truly breathtaking and the Board has presided over a report that has this government’s fingerprints all over it.

The scientific rationale for the SDLs which MDBA has stated are a minimum for river health, have not been released. Statements are being made about huge amounts of water that need to be returned to the rivers but the model and the assumptions are secret. The environmental watering plan that will deliver the water to the 18 targeted areas appears not to have been developed at all.

The farmers I represent have no reason to believe that anyone in Canberra has a clue. For example, last year Penny Wong bought 80,000 ML of water from the Lachlan catchment for South Australia without realising that the Lachlan only reaches the Murray once every 50 years.

Under the current scenario, towns near Albury might find themselves permanently on Stage 4 water restrictions while the Hume Dam spills over with environmental water. If the best use of that water is to “top up” a flood, the authorities will have to be very careful they don’t top up a rain event and flood homes and properties. When I expressed this concern recently, I was told that the Commonwealth could simply buy the river flats so they could flood them as required.

If this is the attitude behind current government policy then it simply dismisses family farms as an inconvenience. There are 26 locks, weirs and barrages on the Murray. It is a highly regulated river. No one is suggesting that we remove these man made structures, yet the scenarios painted by the MDBA benchmark “no development” as if anything that departs from that is a step in the wrong direction.

Our aim should be for healthy working rivers that are not over allocated and that support the environment and communities. This is not a zero sum game. We do not have to shut down towns to protect wetlands.

During the last four years of drought, the dairy farmers, rice farmers and others who grow annual crops received a zero water allocation. People imagined when the Lower Lakes and river redgums were in decline that some greedy irrigator somewhere in the system must be taking all the water. In fact there was no water to take. In a drought, everyone does it tough, including the environment.

At least 270 billion litres that the government claims to have bought as part of the $1.4 billion spent so far will never assist a stressed river or sustain a wetland because of the type of licence and the characteristics of the water. For example, water bought from an upstream farmer might not physically be able to be delivered to a particular wetland using existing flows at a chosen time.

The interconnected nature of the system’s tributaries, wetlands, lakes and river flows is enormously complex and the fact that there is no watering plan in sight shows the inability of the Canberra-based bureaucracy to come to grips with this highly practical aspect of their task.

If the scientists in whom Julia Gillard has placed her trust and her cheque book have their way and 37 per cent cuts kick in across the Basin, there is a tremendous human tragedy waiting to unfold.

Last week I visited the Lower Darling between Pooncarie and Wentworth in Western NSW. I saw farms that run broad acre grazing of sheep and goats and also have a small water allocation (in a good year) and are growing new varieties of citrus and wine grapes, drought tolerant wheat and lucerne in order to become self sufficient in stock feed. One farm supported three households. The sisters-in-law were working the paddock together, driving a purpose built slashing machine up and down the rows of grapes, cutting the cover crop and mulching the vines. There is a school bus that passes the gate and a nearby one-teacher school that started in a farm shed but now has more than 20 students.

I heard about the years of drought from 2003, the worst on record, when the Darling dried up into water holes and everyone struggled with poly pipes and pumps, carting water, digging in the mud, getting by from week to week. When they had almost run out of options, rain from the north reached them. One of the women told me of the feeling of euphoria unlike anything she had ever experienced as she watched the water flowing down the dry river bed.

In the nearby towns of Mildura and Wentworth people battled during those years to keep permanent plantings alive and many family farms went under. Drive around the district now and you will see abandoned blocks with dying vines and dilapidated dwellings. They are unsaleable. The Labor government paid exit grants to encourage blockies to leave the land. But as a condition of the grant - $150 000 - they had to pull out their pipes and decommission their farms so they were permanently removed from production.

The Coalition earmarked $5.8 billion for infrastructure upgrades on farms, so we could help farmers build a future with less water. That infrastructure fund will have to go towards Gillard’s buyback cheque. If Labor was at all interested in efficiency measures they would not have wasted the last three years, taking water out of local communities and putting nothing back.

If the 37 per cent water cut goes through, it will be “game over” for many. Very few farmers can take that sort of hit to their production. Their farms and their irrigation companies will be in danger of falling below the critical mass needed to survive. Irrigation delivery systems will shrink, investment in new plant breeds and technologies will slow, the factory where fruit is supplied will downsize and workers will be laid off. It is the temporary workforce that goes first; the production hands, the bar staff, the shop assistants. If enough leave, house prices go down and facilities start to deteriorate. The hospital may be downgraded, the TAFE will offer fewer courses to the kids who are looking for apprenticeships and training; less tourists will stop and the coffee shops will close.

The busiest people in town will be the financial counsellors, the mental health workers and Centrelink. The churches, the CWA and local charities will pick up the pieces.

Farm family gatherings will be arranged around a Sunday BBQ or a footy match to try to give people the skills to cope.

Councils will struggle to maintain their roads on a declining rate base and they won’t be able to keep community buildings repaired or gardens up to scratch.

Banks and other lenders will start to seriously crunch their numbers now. If they detect that equity is sliding, they may decide to encourage water sales to pay back debt and in many cases the water is worth more than the farm.

The water Minister Tony Burke talks of a long careful consultation. What sort of slow torture will communities have to go through over the next 18 months?

The Water Act leaves the final say with the government. I suggest to the Minister that he step up and take control of the process, his Department and the MDBA. This is a bad plan for regional Australia and it will be a bad government that allows it to remain credible.

At the first of the MDBA’s consultation meetings in Shepparton this week, the Chair and the CEO appeared uncomfortable. When questioned as to why the scientific analysis behind the numbers has not been explained, they blamed state governments for providing the model. They said, “We want you to question the models and suggest how we can make it all better”.

Let’s get this straight. The MDBA writes reports. Farmers grow crops. The MDBA has had three years to write this report and we have had three days to read it. Now suddenly we are supposed to have the expertise to question the models without knowing what the models are?

The consultation sessions are now underway across the basin in the form of a quick flit through a few towns, with slick PowerPoint presentations in halls overflowing with bewildered angry people and not a Labor member or minister in sight.

It’s a shocking indictment on a government that claims to care about country Australia.