I hope you all got a chance to watch the ABC 4 Corners program “Buying Back The River” last night.
The northern end of the Murray Darling basin is a subject that is very dear to me. My formative years were spent growing up on a property in the Gwydir Wetlands. My work as an adult has enabled me to spend over a decade traversing the western river systems and in fact I’ve lived on the banks of the Warrego River at Cunnamulla , on the Bullo river at Quilpie and near the Darling River at Broken Hill.
When Penny Wong and the federal government purchased Toorale station I awarded her an Agmates “Onya” award and watching the program just confirmed to me that the government is doing exactly the right thing in buying back the water licenses.
Reading that article will give you a backgound to what I’m about to say.
The fact is that poor Regulation and Negligence by successive state governments have put the Murray Darling system in crisis.
State governments have allocated licenses on a river by river basis in total ignorance of the fact that the Murray Darling Basin which covers one seventh of Australia’s land mass is the sum total of the contibution of all the rivers in it.
Where I grew up in the Gwydir Valley is just a case of gross government stupidity. In the 1976 Copeton Dam was built at Inverell to supply water to the Gwydir valley, my great uncle and aunt still own a property just below the dam. Cotton development went berserk to such an extent that Copeton dam was 100% over allocated.
The impact on the Gwydir wetlands is catastrophic. In the 70’s the Gwydir wetlands were inpenetrable by anything other than horse. We used to muster cattle in there, but it was an enormous struggle to get them out.
The wetlands were teaming with wildlife – from feral pigs, the biggest black & brown snakes you’d ever see, scorpions, centipedes, to the most magnificent water birds and bird life. Thousands of acres of it, all in a thick maze of huge river red gums, lignum and native grasses.
The Murray Darling is grossly over allocated. What the current drought has done is just graphically illustrated that fact. The only way to fix the system is for the federal government to buy back enough of these licences that were issued in error by state governments to take the strain off the system.
The plight of the Murray Darling is not the fault of the irrigators. They purchased and developed their farms in good faith. The state governments issued the licences for the development of agriculture for the national good.
It is an unfortunate fact that the Australian tax payer must now bail out the Murray Darling River System, to save it from the incompetence / stupidity of the variuos state governments. Has there ever been a better example of why we should abolish the states?
Finally I can’t leave without commenting on Senator Bill Heffernan’s appearance on the program.
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BILL HEFFERNAN, NSW LIBERAL SENATOR: I mean if the Government’s that stupid and the taxpayer’s that generous well good luck to them but I’m saying it’s a national disgrace.
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Senator Heffernan had 10 years in government and did absolutely nothing about the situation. His statement that buying Toorale is a waste of tax payers money shows that he has zero knowledge of how the western river system works.
This is the advice that Heffernan offerred to Penny Wong and the Wentworth Group of Scientists and the Murray Darling Catchment Authority:
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The referee as I say is Mother Nature. No one is listening to the referee so we’ve really got to go back and replan the entire system based on the science of the future and not the history of the past.
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And that is about as good as it ever got from Heffernan over the past 10 years when he was the government. The good Senator would do well to keep his mouth closed. The old saying rings true for the Senator – “Better to have people think you’re a fool, than to open your mouth and prove it to them.”
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Have your say.
