Murray basin plan is nobody’s darling

acotrel says:

05:59am | 29/11/11

‘The science is uncertain, but it does suggest that a minimum of 4,000GL would be required to get us to the threshold required to achieve minimum environmental benefits.’

What ? ?  Science ‘uncertain’  AGAIN ? Has this stuff got something to do with climate change ?

mick says:

06:05am | 29/11/11

This fiasco is a sign of bad government and a farming/business community which considers its needs superior to a healthy river.  Normally the ‘money’ side of such an argument always wins such an argument and the environment loses so it will be interesting to see if a compromise will result in business as usual occurring.

What this issue really needs to ram home to average Australians is that the 12 million extra people which big business has decided to cram into the nation will need water to drink and food to eat.  The Murray Darling is the canary in the cage and demonstrates that our already fragile eco system will be pushed over the edge if population is driven up on the whims of big business which has built a house of cards on an ill-conceived and logically flawed premise.  We need more population like a hole in the head and this water issue goes a long way to explaining why.

acotrel says:

06:10am | 29/11/11

One of our main problems in rural Australia, is that we depend on farmers as the basis of our local economy,  and many of them are only farmers for lifestyle reasons.  If there was the opportunity to move to something else, they’d be there in a flash.  We need a concerted effort to provide alternative work in county towns.  The simple fact is that farmers are always playing catch -up.  A while back a lot of our locals got into wine grapes - there is now a glut.  Most operate with stringent quotas imposed by the canneries.  We have a situation of overproduction, and the use of the water for this purpose must be questioned. Perhaps we need a complete rethink about our manufacturing industries, decentralisation and population growth, and try to develop a new sense of direction ?

Peter says:

06:41am | 29/11/11

Another day another reminder of the most dishonest, most incompetent and worst Government in Australia’s history. Everything these political extremist touch turns into a disaster. No wonder it’s such a mess. Just do us all a favour and resign today before any more damage is done.

Mahhrat says:

06:52am | 29/11/11

This article is too close to the climate change arguments for me. 

You are telling us the “environment” is the big loser, but you can’t tell me why.  At least with climate change we can see the dangers.

The “environment” changes.  It’s natural for that to occur.  We should manage that change as best we can with the competing priorities, but we should never seek to keep the ecology in some kind of time-frozen status quo, just because that’s what we have today.

Mark G says:

07:16am | 29/11/11

The only thing I will say on this topic is that sometimes a compromised plan doesn’t suit anybodies needs. Some plans need to be all or nothing.

Gratuitous Adviser says:

08:33am | 29/11/11

I do not think I have ever experienced such an important issue that has been corrupted by vested and opportunistic interests on both sides.  A sign of the times I guess, where philosophical, systematic and self righteous greed overshadows what is in the best interests of the country.  All I know is that we get what we deserve. 
Consensus is obviously impossible with these groups.  The Government and Windsor are looking to compromise, Tony Abbott is treacherously opposing everything (a bit of a Mao cultural revolution from opposition-interesting), the various Mayors are politicking, the Greens want everything, the irrigators (are any of these Australian owned?) are running a campaign similar in morals to the pokie lobby and the Liberal Premiers want war.  All I know is that we get what we deserve.

Col. of Blackburn says:

10:26am | 29/11/11

I am told that the northern plains of Victoria are still under water, 6 months after the floods. i ask you, what Murray Darling crisis?!

Dieter Moeckel says:

12:20pm | 29/11/11

I really like that way that the Murray Darling basin problem is Juliar’s fault after all. When Juliar was about 12 years old she influenced the massive irrigation projects in Bourke and Cubbi Station and the over allocation of water.
A little earlier I, as a kid remember Bourke as a town in marginal desert sheep country.
For shit sake why is everything that has happened in 220 years Labor and Juliars fault?
There is no such thing as sustainable anything - It was a sustainable environment before we changed it with agriculture, pastoralism etc. Humans are no longer part of the environment but outside it and whatever we do to and in the environment stuffs it up there is no sustainable human use.
We have two choices, 1. go back to the environment as part of it or 2. abuse and continue too abuse it until it is no longer liveable by humans.
The oceans are stuffed, desertification is a fact of life in Africa, deforestation is fact in South America, over population is a fact in India and China, industry is poisoning the planet with plastics, humungous mountains of non degradable rubbish and carbon dioxide is inextricably changing the meteorological environment.
Australia is blithely fucking the most fragile environment on Earth.
A rural paper wrote,“Although the head has dropped in the bores of the Great Artesian Basin, all the water is still there.” with that sort of logic Australia will be the first to become uninhabitable by people.
Thank Christ not in my life time.
So why do anything at all? - catch all the fish, kill all the wild life, poison the earth and the air, used all the water, abuse the planet until ...

Allan says:

12:32pm | 29/11/11

I note that once again the Gawler barrages are not considered to be part of the problem.
The Murray mouth and the lower lakes was an estuary until the barrages were built in the early 1900’s.
The Murray mouth was never navigtable, river freight being transferred to rail at Gawler and taken to Victor Harbour for on shipment.
So we will get two big shallow fresh water lakes wasteing heaps of water to evaporation rather than using the water in the most productive fashion.
Next thing will be that the environmentilists will demand that all the Snowy water should be returned to drain out through Marlo.
The quid pro quo for the irrigators losing their water is the removal of the man made barrages.