June 9, 2010
A more sustainable Murray-Darling Basin (reduced water allocations, greater environmental flows, better agricultural practices) has been on the agenda for several decades. The recent drought and climate change have made this more urgent, especially when the recent floods in Queensland will not reach the lower Murray.
There is not enough fresh water to keep the Lower Lakes artificially fresh any longer.
Many policy analysts were buoyed by the recent CoAG reforms which signalled a move to a more rational allocation of water resources and greater concern for the underlying requirements to maintain ecosystem health. The Commonwealth’s assumption of greater control over water policy has been justified on the grounds that a ‘national approach’ to the problems in the Murray-Darling Basin is required to resolve the ills of the Basin.
Reform is slow and difficult. The changes required are substantial--eg., the Wentworth Group estimates that irrigators will have to reduce the amount of water they take from the Murray-Darling by 30 per cent if the river is to return to an environmentally healthy state.
The Nationals and the National Farmers Federation oppose any attempt to favour the environment at the expense of the needs of rural communities and farmers. So do the state governments in practice, in spite of their often strong advocacy of the reform agenda. Their conception of reform states that increasing efficiency in agriculture can provide a solution to the water crisis in the Basin and result in ‘wins’ for all players. Water-use efficiency’ is portrayed as an environmental saviour and thus deserving of support from the public purse.
One of the major obstacles to a mire sustainable basin is is Victoria's attempts to keep as much of the River Murray water for its own irrigators in the Shepparton and central Goulburn foodbowl area and to take River Murray Water for Melbourne through its north south pipeline. This takes the form of a $2 billion food bowl modernisation of the rundown existing irrigation system--spun as a national building project by the Brumpy Government.
That means it is in the national interest akin to the Snowy Mountains scheme and the Commonwealth has agreed to fund 90 per cent of the project costs. Is it?
The "water-use efficiency" policy of the food bowl project is one designed to save water through public investment in new irrigation infrastructure (more subsidies) rather than reducing water allocations to irrigators and so shrink the irrigation system. It is a subsidy because the irrigators are only paying around $100 million of the $2 billion cost; a subsidy designed to prevent Victorian irrigation districts being forced to close down.
It is dubious policy because it is investing in infrastructure for farms that will eventually be rationalised; the claimed water savings from improved irrigation infrastructure are just not there; and what are deemed leakage actually seeps back to underground aquifers pumped by farmers and to the river. There is lot of mythology surrounding irrigation efficiency and increased productivity and in all probability we may well be left with a whole heap of irrigation infrastructure that will sit there like a giant white elephant.
What this shows is that state governments have generally resisted calls for national control of water resources, unless coupled with substantial financial incentives usually from the commonwealth. Decision-making at the state level also encourages excessive investment in local water-saving projects since this maintains the resource, and the benefits that accompany that resource, in a given jurisdiction.
In this decision making irrigators, have been, and still are, being put ahead of environmental needs.
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Those of us who live in downstream states such as South Australia know in our bones that SA will be a significant loser as a result of upstream ‘renovation’ and 'modernization' of irrigation in Victoria. It has always been thus. All the talk about 'food security' is spin.It is a good deal for Victorian irrigators.
Why doesn't Melbourne increase its drinking water from stormwater recycling rather than taking it from the River Murray?