The Murray Darling Basin

Today, as I did my morning walk I listened to an old  (June) podcast of ABC Radio's "Big Ideas"-titled the Canary in the Coalmine. My pace increased as my blood pressure rose!
The speakers were David Paton, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Adelaide and Richard Kingsford, Professor of Environmental Science University of NSW.
I was provoked to write (belatedly) the following message in the on-line "Comments" relating to this ABC Radio National programme.
"When these guys acknowledge the existence of "The Barrages" which separate the Lower Lakes from the sea and The Coorong from fresh water, then I will believe they are "fair dinkum". Meanwhile they are merely playing "dark green" politics. How can you make the absurd statement that the Lower Lakes are below sea level for the first time in 7,000 years, when before the Barrages were built in the late 1930's, they were always at sea level!!


I have never heard so many misleading statements and half truths. They ought to pack off to Cuba where their political philosophies would be at home.

Flinders Ranges/Innamincka/Birdsville/Lake Eyre Flying Visit 21st and 22nd August 2010

For many years I have wanted to see the Cooper (Cooper Creek) after a flood, visit Birdsville and have a look at Lake Eyre, particularly from the air. After the big rains of last summer and since, with good flows into Lake Eyre we decided this winter was the time to do it. I was much looking forward to spending Election eve at the Birdsville Hotel!

With our friends Bruce and Libby Standen we flew to Adelaide, an uneventful trip with some great views of the Murrumbidgee River (Hay) and the Murrumbidgee/Murray junction.Stayed overnight at Glenelg and at 9:00AM yesterday morning we boarded a Beechcraft King Air-pressurised, twin engined turbo prop jet-a very smart machine. This was a regular tour heavily advertised on the internet and read well. We four were accompanied by a guide and six other passengers. I managed to snare the co-pilot seat for the first leg which was a relatively short hop, for a machine with a cruising speed of 270 knots, to Port Augusta for refuelling. We were told just before take-off that the itinerary had been changed and that we would not be going to Maree, but straight to Innamincka after overflying the Flinders Rangers and Wilpena Pound in particular. We were also told, almost in passing, that we would be going to Coober Pedy on the way back tomorrow.

I was surprised that the pilot immediately ascended to 22,000 feet before descending in to Port Augusta. Good views of Yorke Peninsular, Port Pirie and Wyalla, but hardly the best altitude for general sightseeing.

We flew slightly east of north from Port Augusta and flew around Wilpena Pound after descending to about 5,000 feet. We couldn't take many photos as the windows were fogged over from the cold at the higher altitudes we had been at! It was however, good to get a general idea of what the Flinders Ranges are all about and the Pound in particular. I would now like to see it on the ground. We had quite good views of Lakes Torrens and Frome as we flew on to Innamincka again at high altitude, where we landed for lunch. Our guide placed himself in a back seat where there was no window and apart from handing around a brochure provided no information on what we were looking at-which seemed rather strange. Perhaps he didn't know!

An attractive young barmaid at Innamincka amused me with her very definate view that it would be raining today (Sunday) and that it would start at 6:00AM. She proved to be right!Innamincka surprised me with the undulating nature of the country. The "town" is down in a shallow gorge no doubt cut by the Cooper over millions of years, but well above flood levels now. It is near the junction of the Strezleki Creek with the Cooper. The Strezleki flows north quite a long way before joining the Cooper which by this stage is flowing in a general westerly direction towards Lake Eyre, still many hudreds of river miles away to the south west.

It was determined that it was too wet for us to land at the "Dig Tree" (although I noticed other aircraft on the ground), but that we would overfly it. This turned out to be laughable as the pilot didn't know which tree it actually was and the guide who couldn't see out anyway, was of little help. After several circuits of the general area we went thru the climbing routine and headed for Birdsville. Lots of the country covered by lake like water and I noticed that the lakes had all been joined up, with some big patches of green where the water has receeded, so I concluded it was flood water rather than local run-off. We flew over the Coongie Lakes and Goyders Lagoon, according to my very detailed road map, although there was no confirmation from the pilot or the guide that that was what we were looking at!

Birdsville was just as I expected, on the banks of the Diamentina. The sealed airstrip is right beside the Pub so one simply parks and walks across.David Brook was as good as his word and knocked on our door soon after we arrived and we organised to meet for dinner. I first met David and his wife Nell at the World Hereford Conference in Armidale in 2004, where we shared the platform. He and Nell gave a fascinating speech on life at Birdsville, where South African born Nell went, sight unseen, after her marriage to David. They now have some 8m. acres around Birdsville where they run some 30,000 Hereford cattle. They also raised six children. David was until recently the Mayor, is a 50% owner of the Pub (and the one at Innamincka). He has lived in Birdsville all of his life. He and Nell were instrumental in setting up the OBE Organic Beef organisation and David is Chairman. OBE is a private company owned by the twenty cattle suppliers. They toll kill at a service abbatoir and do their own marketing both domestically and export, particularly to the US.I was most interested to learn from Nell that the catalyst for setting up the organic beef initiative was the threat to the entire Lake Eyre Basin (one sixth of Australia) from the move to have it declared a World Heritage Area, which would have most likely led to destocking. A response which I feel reflected some great innovative thinking. Given that no fertilizers are used and there are no problems with internal or external parasites, meeting the organic criteria did not involve major changes to production practices.

Over dinner I was able to keep everyone posted with the Election Results by accessing the internet on my Iphone. I learned that Telstra NextG came online three days previously.

This morning (Sunday) we woke to stories that it was raining at William Creek, Coober Pedy and Oodnadatta and the weather there was deteriorating.

As arranged David Brook took us on a tour of the town and the famous Birdsville Race Course. We also made a brief visit to his very comfortable home in "suburban" Birdsville. There has been much development around Birdsville of more recent years and the town has a freshness about it. Obviously tourism is ever increasing business. It had only five houses when David was born.

A decision was made that as the aircraft was required in Adelaide the following day and as the weather was too bad for "low" flying over Lake Eyre etc. we had no alternative but to climb above the weather and return to Adelaide. We also learned that at high altitude the aircraft's fuel consumption could be lowered by as much as 50% and there was now no need for a refuelling stop. This we did, flying for over half the trip at 29,000 feet, still in the cloud. My sense and observation was that the ceiling was not much higher, but the pilot made no effort to "go see". Perhaps other aircraft told him otherwise.


In any event we had a fast trip back and arrived in Adelaide to a bright sunny day. Somewhat of an anti-climax. We managed to get an earlier flight home to Sydney, with some good views of the Adelaide Hills and the Murray before cloud obscured further viewing.

Whilst I enjoyed the outing this tour, particularly considering the price paid, was really second rate by way of factors other than the uncontrollable weather and we intend to take it up with the promoters. Link to all photos.

National Broadband Network

My son works at the cutting edge of the Internet Business. We had the following email exchange;

Hi,
Did you see this?
Malcolm Turnbull's Article in The Australian, 17th August, 2010

"The Coalition's spend is less but all Australians will have access to privately provided broadband services, most of which are virtually indistinguishable from Labor's, just at a much lower cost.

Scrutiny of the Rudd-Gillard National Broadband Network reveals no fewer than seven separate reasons why it is going to fail Australians.

First, the NBN will cost far too much to build. It will be the largest investment of taxpayer funds in the country's history. While Labor claims it will find private partners, the NBN is so risky and its likely returns so low that it will probably be entirely funded by taxes. And even the chief executive of NBN Co admits the final cost is highly uncertain.

Several countries have subsidised high-speed broadband, but not on the scale Labor proposes. The taxpayer contribution in Singapore was $200 a person and in New Zealand $330 a person. Labor's extravaganza will cost Australian taxpayers more than $2000 a person.

This vast expense is why the Rudd-Gillard government has refused to submit its plan to Treasury for cost-benefit analysis. It would show the cost of the NBN far outweighs the benefits.

Second, the NBN will increase internet costs for users. Once the government has built a white elephant utterly incapable of earning a reasonable return on capital invested but assured of a monopoly over carriage of internet services, what do you think is going to happen to user charges?

One possibility is that the monopoly provider jacks up prices. The implementation study estimates that for the NBN to earn merely the bond rate, real prices will need to increase 1 per cent each year, rather than decrease rapidly as they have in recent years. And if it doesn't, then its value won't equal the cost of investment. If the government instead decides to charge reasonable wholesale fees, the cashflows earned by NBN will not justify a value remotely near $43bn. Even if most households sign up, the NBN may be worth less than a quarter of that investment.

The trouble with the NBN is that it has been decreed by politicians, not driven by market demands.The fastest networks of today run over optical fibre and there are already many thousands of kilometres of fibre in our networks. The question is whether the huge extra cost of mandating every home in Australia be connected to fibre-optic cable is justified. Millions of Australians can already achieve fast broadband speeds over networks currently in place, and we know today's speeds will increase rapidly in coming years.

Consumer preferences often turn out to be very different from what politicians, engineers and bureaucrats anticipate. The reality is that broadband involves horses for courses: some consumers and businesses want fibre optic now; others will be fine with cheaper alternatives such as hybrid fibre-coaxial (which can already deliver 100 megabits per second) or very high speed ADSL; yet others will prefer wireless. Only bureaucrats think in terms of one size fits all.

And don't forget, Canberra is terrible at building and operating commercial services. Perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of the NBN is that a government-controlled entity can roll out a vast undertaking such as national fibre-to-the-home on budget and on schedule. This from the people who couldn't build school assembly halls without billions in rorts? Who tragically mismanaged the home insulation program? Who put less than half the computers promised in schools at double the cost?

For the past 30 years there has been a realisation that governments are better off leaving it to the private sector to run businesses. That is why Telstra (and its peers abroad such as British Telecom) were privatised in the first place.

In addition, Canberra will have a huge conflict of interest. A remarkable part of Labor's broadband fantasy is the idea that the government can even-handedly pursue the national interest when it is both owner of the monopoly broadband network and regulator of Australia's communications market.

Let's say the NBN turns out to be the dud that most business observers expect and that five years down the track an alternative emerges providing adequate service at a lesser cost; say a variant of wireless. Will the government surrender its monopoly, rendering its investment worthless? Or will it enforce laws barring households and businesses from using a cheaper and perfectly adequate substitute technology?

If you don't think this Labor government would do that, you are wrong. Its heads of agreement with Telstra requires Telstra not to offer cheaper HFC broadband of 100Mbps because it would compete with the NBN. Good for the NBN monopoly, perhaps, but terrible for consumers.

Last, money spent on the NBN can't be spent on other services. In economics, one of the most important concepts is "opportunity cost", the idea that once you spend your money on one thing, you can't spend it on something else. If tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are invested in this low-yielding yet risky venture they can't be spent on better hospitals, schools, roads or public transit. There is no benefit to taxpayers or the Australian economy from spending $43bn or more if the NBN is worth a fraction of that when sold. Such risk is better borne by the private sector so shareholders, not taxpayers, lose out if the plan goes off the rails.

Clever governments understand that you fix problems by empowering initiative and enterprise, by creating an environment where the ingenuity and flexibility of the market is best able to deliver the cheapest and most effective solutions."END QUOTE

Mike to Dad,
He is spot-on!

Murray Darling Basin

On Sunday 15th August I sent the following letter to the Sydney Morning Herald.
"Senator Wong's response ( Phantom Water SMH 14th August) to Debra Jopson's expose on phantom water (SMH 12th August) clearly demonstrates how the Senator and her extreme green advisers just don't "get it". The "lack of water flowing down the rivers of the Murray Darling Basin" is not caused by "decades of mis-management and over-allocation". It is caused by the lack of inflows to which the Senator refers. Let me try to explain.

Australia's rivers are highly variable and water is dynamic, it either runs away to the sea or it evaporates. We deal with the variability by building storages and having seasonal allocations for irrigation. When there is no or very limited water, there are no allocations. Having some water in the headwater storages, with minimal allocations for irrigation, allowed the Murray River to be kept flowing through this drought of record low rainfall and run-off into the river and dams.

Buying back an irrigation license/entitlement when there is no allocation generates no water. It will "generate" extra water (leave it in the river) when there is a good flow or flood and there would have been an allocation, but that is not when our rivers most need it and that will limit agricultural production for negligible environmental benefit.

By way of example, the first major water buy-back by this Government was the purchase of Toorale Station, Bourke in 2008 for $23.75m. There has been additional water in the Darling River as a consequence of this purchase during the big flows earlier this year. This additional water amounted to less than 1% of the flow past Bourke! Of the flow past Bourke that reached either the Menindee Lakes Storage or the Lower Lakes Storage at the mouth of the Murray, at least 50% will evaporate.

Engineering changes to reduce evaporation of fresh water in these storages could make a meaningful impact. All we have seen so far is political action pandering to misconceptions which will do little for the environment but have a long term negative impact on our ability to produce agricultural products for a hungry world."

Irrigation-Politics and Sovereign Risk

I was recently asked to write an overview of the politics of Australian irrigation with emphasis on the Barwon-Darling River. This is what I wrote:-

Big Picture-Background
Australia is claimed to be the most urbanised country on earth with the great majority of the population clustered in coastal cities. The very strong democracy, highly visible in a pre-election environment, appropriately has the voting power where the people are. Thus, the people with the electoral power are geographically separated from rural activities and generally have little knowledge of agriculture.
Furthermore, Australian urban voters have been strongly influenced by environmental advocates who are given significant exposure by the media. The “virtuous greens” are a significant market segment in our cities and like to feel they are playing their part in “saving the planet”.
There is a widely held perception that our inland rivers, from which irrigation water is extracted, have been “over allocated and mismanaged” by previous authorities, who did not have the benefit of today’s environmentally enlightened incumbents. This is mostly nonsense, but I believe it is a widely held belief.
Australia’s rainfall and thus river flows, is highly variable and thus it makes good sense to conserve water in efficient dams when flows are big. This can be for later use and/or flood mitigation. Usage by irrigators is controlled by variable allocations within each water year. An irrigation license/entitlement allows water to be extracted from the river only when defined conditions are met and allocations are made. When flows are low or non-existent, allocations are likewise low or absent. Irrigators understand this and knowingly accept the risks involved.
The drought of recent years has seen the run-off into our major state owned dams at the lowest level since white settlement and this has still not been corrected. This fact if by far the most significant cause of low river flows. Yet the belief that our rivers have been “over allocated and mismanaged” has seen Governments (mainly Federal) attempting to correct the situation by the purchase and effective cancellation of irrigation licenses. This will do nothing for our rivers when flows (and thus allocations) are low and will only constrain production when water supplies are plentiful. But, that does not appear to be understood.
Most of the focus has been on the Murray Darling Basin which covers Victoria north and west of the Great Dividing Range (GDR), all of NSW west of the GDR, and the southern half of Queensland west of the GDR until the Lake Eyre catchment in the far west of that state. This area includes some of Australia’s very best country (soils and rainfall) and some 80% of its irrigation. After the Murray and Darling Rivers join in south western NSW the river flows west in to South Australia before turning south and flowing in to Lakes Alexandrina and Albert (the Lower Lakes) from where it originally flowed in to the Southern Ocean. However in the 1930’s, the South Australians built a series of weirs (“The Barrages”) just above the ocean entrance to convert the Lower Lakes from their natural state of being sometimes salty and sometimes fresh, depending on river flows, into a state whereby they always contain fresh water and the sea is obstructed from entering. The Lakes are wide and shallow and evaporation losses of fresh water are huge.
South Australia is the driest state in the second driest continent on earth, (Antarctica is the driest), and the Murray River is the only decent river in the state. South Australians adopt a “victims attitude” and children are taught in primary school what a poor deal the state gets with upstream irrigators, in particular, extracting water that is “rightfully theirs”. The inefficiencies of water use, particularly the evaporation losses from the Lower Lakes are taboo subjects, rarely mentioned.
It would seem, perhaps by accident, that South Australians hold most of the key posts in the Commonwealth Government involved in the management of water. Senator Penny Wong the Minister for Water and Climate Change is a Senator for South Australia. Senator Nick Xenaphon is also a South Australian Senator and came to Canberra with one of his key objectives being to “save the Murray”. The new CEO of the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is a former South Australian water bureaucrat. Professor Mike Young, probably Australia’s best known water scientist and a prominent member of the philosophically “dark green” Wentworth Group of “concerned scientists”, is Adelaide based and will not publically acknowledge the problem of “The Barrages”.
Against this backdrop, the Federal government has passed legislation to give it greater control over management of the Murray Darling Basin and the Murray Darling Basin Authority has been charged with writing a management plan for the Basin which in terms of the Water Act 2007 gives very much more weight to environmental issues than it does to socio-economic issues. The Productivity Commission has recommended that the Act be amended to correct this, but there would appear to be little public support for such a move. Irrigators are very concerned that the MDBA plan will recommend significant reductions in entitlements for irrigation.
Today it was announced that release of the MDBA Plan will be delayed until after the election. A change in Government would probably see greater sympathy for the irrigator’s position and certainly the junior member of the Coalition, The Nationals have a better understanding of the situation than do the Labor Party representatives.


NSW and the Cap
In the mid 1990’s the Australian States agreed that a cap should be placed on further irrigation development and extractions in the Murray Darling Basin. The agreement broadly was that extractions should be capped at the 1994 level, based on water that would be extracted, under the then management regimes to service the level of development which then existed. This “cap” was progressively implemented river by river with the exception of the Mungindi-Menindee reach of the unregulated (meaning no physical regulation by way of a major dam) Barwon Darling. The Barwon Darling cap implementation was complicated and delayed by the highly variable nature of river flows, a lack of reliable historical information and a very strong lobby by local irrigators.
In 2006 a deal was struck between the Government and Barwon Darling irrigators to apply the cap at an interim level of 173GL (173,000ML). This compared with the total entitlement of 517 GL-a cut of 67%. The 517 GL was the aggregate of all licenses including “sleepers” and the total amount had never been used. Usage was more in the area of 250GL. The interim figure was based on a computer model of the river in which the irrigators had little confidence. The model was to be reviewed by a representative “working group” and many thought the correct figure would be more like 240GL, once metering errors and the like were corrected. A particularly strong argument was that the area of cotton grown in 1994 could certainly not have been grown with only 173GL. The agreement had some attractive features including introduction of carry-over water in years when extractions were below individual irrigators share of the 173GL’s and the introduction of an initialisation amount credited to individual irrigators water accounts.
This working group had one or two meetings, but never completed its work. Then out of the blue, earlier this year, the Barwon Darling (Mungindi/Menindee) irrigators received from the NSW Office of Water a convoluted letter advising that the 173GL figure was to be reduced to 143GL’s (a further 17% cut) on the basis that the Murray Darling Basin Authority supported by the Independent Audit Group, claimed that the Darling River was continually exceeding cap. Cap was defined not as the simple 173GL number, but yet another modelled figure which apparently took account of river heights and calculated a different cap figure. This was news to the signatories to the agreement with the Government who without exception believed that the cap figure (interim) was simply the 173 GL’s against which actual metered extractions would be compared.
The NSW Government appeared to accept the irrigator’s argument and the point that if they had a problem with the MDBA/Ministerial Council they needed to deal with it in the context that they were bound by their agreement with the Barwon Darling irrigators. The government has now deferred the matter for twelve months mainly to monitor what happens in 2010 when river flows have been so much greater. In legal terms the Government has great power and any legal action by the irrigators would be unlikely to be successful.
Summary
There is little public sympathy for the irrigator’s position. Yet:
• Irrigated agriculture contributes approximately 25 per cent of the gross value of Australian agricultural production, 3% of GDP, 22% of exports, but only uses 0.4 per cent of Australia’s farming area (Source: CSIRO, 2006)
• Australia utilises about 8% of its available water for industry, agriculture and support of the population, with agriculture using about 65% of this, or less than 6% of Australia’s water (Source: National Land and Water Audit 1997 – 2002)
• In their ‘natural’ state, the rivers located in the southern half of Australia experience more variable flows than virtually any other rivers in the world (Murray-Darling Basin Commission 2005)
• Between 1885 and 1960, the Darling River stopped flowing at Menindee on 48 occasions – well before irrigation existed on the river or its tributaries (Australian Farm Institute).

On the local scene Mungindi/Menindee extractions average only about 6% of flows past Bourke. The final cap figure, be it 143GL or 250GL, compares with an annual average flow past Bourke of 2,500 GL’s, with extractions only allowed from the bigger flows. This would seem a small environmental price to pay for all of the socio-economic benefits derived, particularly to a series of disadvantaged towns along the river whose populations include a large proportion of indigenous Australians.
It should also be noted that water flowing past Bourke is usually stored downstream in the Menindee Lakes. A series of natural lakes engineered to form a highly inefficient water storage, where normally half the water diverted is lost to evaporation.
To my mind, the irrigator’s argument has “right” on its side, particularly if it is accepted that Australia has a moral responsibility to sustainably maximise its agricultural production. I remain sufficiently naive to believe that in the long run “right” will prevail.
David Boyd
22.07.10

Waste of Good Water

Letter published in The Australian on Friday 13th August,2010

"In a world worrying about food security, would someone please explain to me why both our main political parties and the Greens want to send fresh water downstream to Australia's most inefficient water storage-the Lower Lakes- where most of it will evaporate, rather than removing The Barrages at the mouth of the Murray River and returning the Lakes to the natural estuary they once were?

David Boyd,St Ives, NSW"

Murray Darling Basin

Both of our competing political leaders are pandering to the Murray mouth fresh water alarmists. Alan Jones with over 1m. listeners to Radio 2GB in Sydney, has been talking about the nonsense of the Government buying non-existent water, that is entitlements when there are no allocations. In an attempt to help him get words around the two key issues I sent him the following email. Pretty patronising of me to try to help one of the very best communicators around, but it is not easy to clearly express.

Dear Alan,
You may recall from our meetings at Bourke (Port of Bourke Hotel and all that), when I was Chairman and CEO of Clyde Agriculture; that I have a passionate interest in getting the truth into the public arena about our rivers and irrigation. It is a big communication challenge and I struggle to get the words right. However, perhaps my latest iteration might help.

There are two issues which 'get at me'.

First, we deal with the massive variability of our rivers by granting irrigation licenses/entitlements, that are subject to seasonal allocations. No, or limited, water, no allocations. Thus, the Government buying licenses, when there is minimal water and thus no allocations, will do nothing for our rivers, but will restrict agricultural production when water supplies are ample.

Second, the issue of "The Barrages" that close the Lower Lakes off from the Southern Ocean while they evaporate their heads off. I can do little better than quote from the website of a Goolwa (SA) based organisation LakesNeedWater-

"Since we started LakesNeedWater over one year ago, our core message has consistently been that the Lower Lakes should have, well, water. This is hardly rocket science after all. Why anyone would believe that holding back seawater and allowing the lakes to dry out is preferable to allowing seawater to mix with freshwater defies logic. Among the great rivers of the world, such as the Nile, the Amazon, the Yangtze, and the Mississippi, the River Murray is alone in being cut off from its mouth. Does anyone honestly believe it is healthy for a river to be separated from the ocean by kilometres of barrages, resulting in the loss of 90% of its historic estuary?

The scaremongers have it all wrong with their single-minded obsession with fresh water in the Lower Lakes. The River Murray needs a healthy estuary, not artificially maintained freshwater lakes. Rivers need estuaries. It really is that simple."

I hope this helps. Keep up the good work.Regards,

David Boyd

ABC TV Coverage of the Lower Lakes Without a Single Mention of the Scandal of "The Barrages". ABC News,7:30 Report,and now Landline.

I am not into conspiracy theories, but sometimes I wonder! The biggest problem of the Lower Lakes is not upstream extractions (with minimal allocations there have been bugger all in recent years anyway); but the downstream blocking of seawater entering the Lakes as it always did when river flows were low, before The Barrages were built. For further background see lakesneedwater.org

You wont get a S.A. funded scientist to publically criticise them, for fear of their funding drying up!