Historic meeting makes history on truly historic day

Two years on from this much hailed event and the gloss on this agreement is now about as shiny as the murky waters of the rivers it was meant to help.  It is only recent rains and flooding throughout the Murray Darling Basin that has provided desperately needed relief for drought stricken communities and our great environmental assets teetering on collapse.  While it is great to see more water flowing and cautious optimism returning to some communities, we cannot lose sight of the urgent need for real reform in the Basin.

Good northern rains, if backed up with more in the southern basin this winter, could buy a little more time, but the last few very dry, very tough years cannot be forgotten.  If we don’t deliver meaningful reforms soon then future drought and low inflows will again result in overly stressed irrigation communities and risk more environmental disasters.  It may not happen this year, but it will no doubt happen sooner than we are currently prepared for.

What we have learnt from this summer’s flooding is that we are a long, long way from having effective national management of the Murray Darling Basin’s water resources.  A Premier begging his upstream counterparts for water, backroom deals and pre-election favours for mates is no way to run our most important national waterway.  This process is in urgent need of re-examination.

The other urgent wake up call that must be heard is the failure to progress vital water-saving infrastructure projects, which will see much of the current floodwaters unnecessarily wasted.  The states have an appalling record of delay and deferral on the major infrastructure projects the Basin desperately needs - projects they were gifted $3.7 billion to complete as part of the “historic national agreement”.

These so-called “Priority Projects” include long overdue works such as the reengineering of one of our most inefficient water storages, the Menindee Lakes system.  The absolute failure of the Rudd and NSW Governments to progress this project is unforgivable.  Millions of litres of water will be wasted through seepage, leakage and evaporation as all four Lakes within this system are now being filled for the first time in years.

One would think that a “Priority Project” would be, well, urgent, and a priority.  In 2007 the then Labor Opposition had the Menindee Lakes on top of its to do list.  Yet Labor has done next to nothing to push this, or many of the other “Priority Projects”. 

It’s time for Minister Wong to get serious about delivering water-saving infrastructure projects.  These are projects which can return water to the system for environmental allocation, make storages, measurements or transport systems more efficient and, critically, make our irrigators even more efficient, so that they can maintain the production that is so important to Australia’s food security as well as the economic fabric of so many regional communities. 

Agreements are worse than meaningless if they end up being all blah, blah, blah and no real action, because they create false hope and result in deferral of other actions that might otherwise have been undertaken.  So, as we ponder yet more talk of “historic national agreements” let’s not just remember those agreements in water, health or elsewhere that have gone before, but let’s actually see some commitment to real action, fast delivery and genuine change … because that would be historic!

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