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A Sustainable Water Future without compromising the health of interdependent ecosystems

Open Letter

Leader of ALP, LP & Greens

Leaders ALP, LP & Greens

Parliament House

Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Leader,

I am writing to respond to your policies issued by your party for the federal election to be held on the 21^st March 2010 vs. the Water Action Coalition’s submission to the Senate Inquiry Water (Crisis Powers & Floodwater Diversion) Bill 2010. This submission raises serious issues of community concerns that are not being addressed by your policy statements.

There is no issue of greater concern to the South Australian electorate – country, regional and city – than security of water and related environmental impacts. WAC is a broadly based movement of community groups and environmental organisations with strong representation from across the State. I emphasise that the WAC movement is a non-party political organisation that is seeking constructive dialogue with all parties to ensure sustainable water solutions that do not harm the environment, are implemented by the next Parliament.

Of critical concern is the failure of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to release their science based draft Basin Plan until after the election. This effectively means that the next Parliament will have no mandate to implement required water reforms contained within the plan.

There are other significant questions that need to be placed before the Australian people. The major political parties must release their detailed policies on how they intend resolving the crisis of the Murray Darling Basin. We also seek answers in relation to the following demands that WAC made in its submission to the Senate Enquiry:

• A referendum should be held to decide whether all water remains as the common property of Australia under section 100 of the Constitution or amend the Constitution to allow water to become private property.
• An immediate and independent audit of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) should be conducted of all private and public water storages within two weeks of coming to office. This audit needs to fully account for every drop of water diverted in the MDB during the last 12 months, the use it has been put to and the proportion exported as virtual water.
• South Australia’s minimum entitlement of 1850 GL should be restored and sufficient environmental flows provided within three months of coming to office to ensure ecological safe levels within Lake Albert and Lake Alexandrina.
• A Royal Commission should investigate the constitutional issues and operational failures in the MDB that has resulted from almost two decades of water reform. During the period of the Royal Commission a State of Emergency should be declared for the management of all waters in the MDB.

Failure by the major parties to publicly state their position on these matters further weakens any claims for a policy mandate for the Murray-Darling Basin resulting from this election.

Yours sincerely,

John E. Caldecott

Convenor

Water Action Coalition (SA)

Media Coordinator:

Richard Watson

richard@thinkstrat.com

Mobile: 0402 418 191

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References

1. WAC Press Release – “Water Reform Fails South Australia”

16^th August 2010

http://www.civictrust.net.au/100816WACMediaRelease.pdf

2. WAC Opinion Article - “Water Reform Fails South Australia”

16^th August 2010

Maude Barlow & John Caldecott

http://www.civictrust.net.au/100816WACOpinionArticle.pdf

3. Senate Inquiry Water (Crisis Powers & Floodwater Diversion) Bill 2010

WAC Speech Notes Senate Inquiry 30^th June 2010

http://www.civictrust.net.au/100630WACSpeechToSenate.pdf

4. Water Action Coalition Submission No. 15

Senate Inquiry Water (Crisis Powers & Floodwater Diversion) Bill 2010

Water Reform Fails South Australia

The former Senior Adviser on Water to the United Nations and international critic of water market reforms Maude Barlow said that both “Labor and Coalition parties have so far failed to propose solutions to address the continuing emergency in South Australia’s River Murray.

“The entire Murray-Darling basin, its rivers, tributaries, wetlands, communities, towns, cities and economies that it supports, will not survive the pressures that have been placed on its water resources by decades of mismanagement and the creation of water markets,” said Ms Barlow.

Ms Barlow said she was motivated to comment having witnessed first hand the disastrous state of Lake Albert, Lake Alexandrina, Coorong and Murray Mouth during a visit to South Australia in 2009.

“Sixteen years of water reform has failed to deliver a fair and reasonable share of the waters of the Murray-Darling Basin to South Australia. The water reform policies of both State and Federal Governments has been about privatising water itself rather then conservation.” she said.

Maude Barlow is the International Patron of the Water Action Coalition (WAC). WAC is a diverse and broadly represented group of concerned South Australians that is challenging Commonwealth and State water policies.

WAC recently presented its views to a Senate Inquiry, arguing that nothing short of a full public inquiry, with the powers of a Royal Commission, could unravel decades of bad policy, gross mismanagement and ongoing exploitation of the waters of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Maude Barlow says she supports the need for a Royal Commission as the actions of politicians have failed to uphold the constitutional obligation of Parliament to retain public ownership of all waters.

The convenor of WAC John Caldecott says that “International investors have been allowed to buy water rights that the founding fathers of the Australian Constitution made clear were the common property of Australia. What is happening, and it has been happening by stealth over a number of decades is outrageous and undemocratic.”

The fundamental right that water in the rivers of Australia be held in public trust, which is enshrined in the Australian Constitution and supported by Common Law is being ignored by the States and the Commonwealth.

“South Australians are being dispossessed of their fundamental right to water under the Australian Constitution. All political parties must respect this right and develop solutions that honour the constitution,” he said.

“We have seen nothing from the two major parties that give us any confidence that the Nation’s water resources will be protected from international and greedy market profiteers or the recognition that water is the connecting element that sustains all life in this country,” he said.

“By not releasing the draft Basin Plan before going to the polls the incoming Government will have no mandate to implement its recommendations,” he said.

In its submission, WAC argues that the crisis in the River Murray should have been fixed by the Commonwealth a long time ago by using its executive powers to establish a State of Emergency. A key objective would be to conserve and prioritise water use to meet Australian needs first and foremost.

“The next Australian Government must act to establish a State of Emergency without delay,” he said.

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References:

WAC Senate Inquiry Speech Notes, Parliament House Canberra, 30^th June 2010.

WAC Opinion: Water Reform Fails South Australia, Maude Barlow & John Caldecott, 16^th August 2010

Information Contacts:

Media Coordinator: Richard Watson – Mobile: 0402 418 191 richard@thinkstrat.com

WAC Convener: John Caldecott – Mobile: 0427 976 503 jec@ciq.com.au

International Patron: Maude Barlow – mbarlow8965@rogers.com

Water Action Coalition: http://civictrust.net.au/page19.htm

MISSING MURRAY INFLOWS: FEDERAL WATER MINISTER MUST DELIVER ON PROMISE

It is now evident that there will be no meaningful flows into the River Murray following record rains in much of the northern Darling catchment earlier this year. There have been no natural flows from the mouth of Australia’s largest river system since 2002.

The finger is being pointed at poorly regulated and possibly illegal surface-water diversions, constructed predominantly in the Darling catchment. It has been suggested that these vast “ring-tanks” have the capacity to prevent up to 1,500 billion litres of floodwater from entering the river system. The now disbanded Murray Darling Basin Commission estimated that these shallow storages are associated with evaporative losses of up to 50%. Total annual inflows into the entire Murray-Darling system have averaged only 4,150 billion litres in recent years.

National Coordinator of Fair Water Use, Ian Douglas, commented today, “In August 2008, the Commonwealth Government announced that it would provide detailed and regularly updated information on the scale of private diversions in the Murray-Darling Basin; to date no such data has been released”.

“At a meeting with Senator Wong earlier this year, Fair Water Use sought an assurance that this data would be produced as promised; unfortunately we received no such undertaking”, he added.

Dr Douglas concluded, “It is hard to understand how a Basin Plan that does not factor-in the total capacity of private storages can produce the outcomes that are necessary if the Murray-Darling river system is to be restored as a healthy river system, able to support its communities into the future”.

Fair Water Use urges Senator Wong to release this vital information, promised nearly two years ago.

WENTWORTH GROUP PROPOSAL THREATENS AUSTRALIA’S WATER SECURITY AND BASIN FOOD PRODUCTION

Although the recommendations made in the paper released yesterday by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists achieve the necessary reduction in diversions from the Murray-Darling Basin, national environmental and public water-rights advocacy group, Fair Water Use Australia, is concerned that its authors place inappropriate emphasis on minimising the impact on profitable irrigating enterprises, as opposed to those which provide the greatest economic and social benefit to the nation – and Basin communities in particular.

The reduction in diversions of less than 10% proposed for the Darling catchment will lead to a projected drop in profits of 2% or less in that part of the Basin, whereas a massive fall in profits is projected for the Murrumbidgee and Murray catchments (26% and 12% respectively) following the proposed 65% and 39% reductions in diversions in these vital food-producing areas.

Many of the large agribusinesses operating in the Darling catchment are engaged in cotton cultivation, a far from labour-intensive industry largely carried out in a naturally semi-arid environment and widely suspected of involvement in, at best, poorly regulated water-harvesting on floodplains; an activity which further reduces inflows into what is still a profoundly stressed river system.

Overseas entities are already heavily involved in the cultivation and ginning of cotton in the Murray-Darling Basin. Thereafter, Australian cotton undergoes minimal value-adding in this country. Together with massive volumes of virtual water, profits increasingly head overseas, with little benefit to regional communities.

Cotton properties with an estimated value of over 1 billion dollars are currently up for sale in the Darling catchment. Fair Water Use has been advised that several overseas-based consortia have already expressed an interest.

The Wentworth Group’s paper will be welcomed by the owners of cotton operations in the Darling catchment, consistently amongst the poorest performers in terms of gross receipts per megalitre of water utilised, and especially by those whose properties are on the market.

Fair Water Use believes that the Wentworth Group’s proposal would promote increased cotton cultivation in Australia, to the financial benefit of corporate investors but to the profound detriment of the Murray-Darling Basin and its communities.

The Murray-Darling crisis will not be resolved until there is a dramatic reduction in diversions. However Fair Water Use does not agree that undesirable impacts would be minimised by the scheme recommended by the Wentworth Group and has grave concerns that, if implemented, the proposal would exacerbate existing threats to Australia’s water security and seriously compromise national food production.

Fair Water Use calls on the Wentworth Group to clearly enunciate its position on water reform and specifically the ongoing de-facto privatisation of Australia’s water.

Darling floods: the water-grab continues

Today’s announcement by the NSW Office of Water, that irrigators in the upper Darling have had “sufficient opportunities . . . to receive as much (water) as they want to” and that, despite initial projections, flows in the lower Darling will be insufficient to fill the Menindee Lakes, once again raises serious concerns about the management of the Murray-Darling Basin, according to national lobby group, Fair Water Use.

The group’s national coordinator, Ian Douglas, responded to the statement saying, “Irrespective of the content of the Basin Plan, until such time as the Murray-Darling Basin Authority can put a figure on the combined capacity of private water storages throughout the basin, including illegal flood-plain diversions in the Darling catchment, there is little likelihood that basin-wide outcomes resulting from the implementation of the plan will be anywhere close to expectations”.

He continued, “In a meeting earlier this year with the Federal Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, we enquired whether the Commonwealth would undertake to instruct the Authority to carry out a detailed audit of these storages. Unfortunately we received no such undertaking”.

“Fair Water Use calls upon the Minister to commit to releasing this essential information as part of the Basin Plan”, Dr Douglas concluded.

Fair Water Use (Australia)

+61 (0)8 8398 0812 / (0)4 1602 2178

RIVER MURRAY EMERGENCY – Time to Call a National State of Emergency?

“It is time the major parties backed calls for a National State of Emergency to be called in the River Murray – says John Caldecott Convenor of the Water Action Coalition. WAC is a diverse and broadly represented group of concerned South Australians that have been calling for a Public Inquiry into management of water and the environment in South Australia.

A National State of Emergency should have been called when South Australia’s total low flow entitlement was significantly reduced below 1850 GL in early 2007 which has so significantly affected South Australian; our precious river and lake environments, town and urban water supply, and irrigators. The Adelaide Advertiser published a call for a National State of Emergency on 30^th July 2008 by 13 experts. Why did the Rann Labor Government fail to act”?

The river and 120 kms of levee banks below Lock 1 have been allowed to crack and dry out so badly that a flood now would cause severe erosion (For graphic images see “Preserving our heritage”). “Where are the plans of the major parties to restore South Australia’s minimum entitlement of 1850GL?” Section 100 of the Constitution demands a fair share of all river flows. “Governments of the Murray-Darling Basin must immediately put into effect plans for South Australia’s emergency to be relieved by all 17 water sharing regions of the Murray-Darling Basin working together.”

National and State Governments have been overly focussed on creating the National Water Market and turning river water into a private commodity to the detriment of all else. “The Rudd and Rann Governments have failed to ensure water in short supply is properly prioritised to meet domestic needs first. South Australians are being sold out of the river”

In December 2009 the National Water Commission reported that in 2008/09 a record 1800 GL of available river water was traded in the southern part of the basin. This demonstrated that despite the drought conditions it wasn’t broke by any means. 1600 GL was traded in 2007/08 the first year of the new national water market. South Australia’s share of total diversions since 1996/97 of around 100,000 GL has been just 6%. Adelaide’s water use is meagre compared to these numbers and they do not justify the building of Desalination plants in our Gulfs to add to the environmental disasters that already exists.

“The Rann Labor Government has put all its faith into water markets and failed to ensure water sharing agreements covered all seasons of the Murray-Darling Basin; Flood, Normal Flow, Low Flow, Drought and Emergencies to share all water in the Basin.”

“The question of why our Governments have failed to act needs to be investigated by a comprehensive Public Inquiry with the powers of a Royal Commission. Just what are they afraid of? Are they afraid to tell South Australians of their secret water privatisation agenda to privatise water itself?” said John Caldecott.

Further information about WAC:

Google Water Action Coalition

Australian Civic Trust WAC Page: http://civictrust.net.au/page19.htm

WAC Convenor:

John Caldecott, Mobile: 0427 976 503

Water Action Coalition Coordination Committee Contacts:

John Caldecott jec@ciq.com.au Richard Watson richard@thinkstrat.com

Shame on you SANTOS: The unacceptable risks of coal seam gas mining

Environmental and public water-rights advocate, Fair Water Use, has received a report vindicating widespread public concerns about the activities of the mining sector in the Murray-Darling Basin. Its contents refute assurances from the industry that their coal seam gas mining operations will have little impact on the catchment of the nation’s largest river system.

The image below is of the area around the tailing pond of one of the thousands of exploratory shafts that are being drilled as part of the evaluation of coal seam gas mining in the Murray-Darling Basin; a much criticised process which threatens to contaminate and deplete local aquifers and creeks, cripple regional agriculture and reduce inflows into the river system.

Contaminated effluent escaping into the East Pilliga State Forest

Fair Water Use has been informed that the site in question is one operated by Eastern Star Gas, a company in which SANTOS has a 35% holding.  The effluent flowing from the breach in its tailing pond contains a range of industrial contaminants. It is flowing into Jacks Creek and ultimately into the Namoi Catchment which feeds into the Murray-Darling river system. More images of the significant problems at the site may be viewed here.

National coordinator of Fair Water Use, Ian Douglas stated this morning, “We have been advised that Eastern Star did not inform relevant authorities about the breach and consequent pollution until one week after the leak first occurred: five days later than the period required under the terms of its operating licence”.

He continued, “Coal seam gas mining has been abandoned in many parts of the world as a result of major environmental damage”.

“It has been allowed to flourish in NSW and Queensland by seriously compromised and revenue-hungry state governments which have ignored the conclusions of many independent reports on the issue”, Dr Douglas concluded.

Fair Water Use has contacted the Premiers of NSW and Queensland requesting that they heed the concerns of local residents and consider the potential impacts on the millions of Australians that depend on the Murray-Darling river system. It has urged Premiers Keneally and Bligh to intervene and put an end to coal seam gas mining in the region.

The Big Water Debate

Hawke Centre FREE public forum

RSVP essential via Hawke Centre web site or phone 08 8302 0215

The Big Water Debate

Thursday 11 February
5.30pm for a 6.00pm start

Allan Scott Auditorium, UniSA City West campus, Hawke Building, 50 North Terrace, Adelaide

Keynote address by Professor Ian Lowe, President of the Australian Conservation Foundation “The truth and lies about water politics”

A sustainable Water Future without compromising the health of interdependent ecosystems is a critical issue for our state and our nation.

Water security is critical to business, agriculture and the quality of our lifestyle and our water future is of significant concern to the South Australian electorate – whether country, regional or city-based. It will be a major policy issue at the forthcoming State election.

Invitations have gone out to major and minor political parties to outline their policies in a debate format and an open question time will be provided afterwards.

Highly respected Professor Ian Lowe, President of the Australian Conservation Foundation will commence proceedings with his address: “The Truth & Lies About Water Politics“.

About the Water Action Coalition: WAC is a broadly based movement of community groups and environmental organisations seeking an informed and constructive debate on our water future. WAC seeks policies to secure a sustainable supply of water, without compromising the health of interdependent ecosystems, with the goal that these be implemented by the incoming SA Government and sustained by future governments for the benefit of all.

Jointly presented by the Water Action Coalition and The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre

MDBA asked to clarify its environmental agenda

The announcement by the chairman of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Mike Taylor, that the Federal Government’s Basin Plan will prioritise provision of water to selected environmental sites above other uses, requires clarification, according to environmental and public water rights advocacy group Fair Water Use (Australia).

“It is encouraging to note that the MDBA is acknowledging the importance of placing the environment first”, the group’s national coordinator, Ian Douglas, responded today.

He continued, “It is essential that the MDBA provides full details of its intentions. Although a laudable aim in itself, sadly the salvage of a few high-profile wetlands will do little to improve the overall condition of the river system and its ability to provide the Basin-wide ecological services upon which its communities and agriculture depend.”

“Mr Taylor has stated that the MDBA has been directed to first deal with issues related to the environment. If the Authority is committed to this outcome, it must undertake to receive truly independent and annually updated advice on the inflows that are required to restore and maintain the health of the rivers and then ensure that this water is allowed to flow into and through the system”, Dr Douglas added.

He concluded, “Fair Water Use seeks confirmation from Mr Taylor that the actions of the MDBA will allow meaningful volumes of water to flush down the rivers and out the Murray mouth, as anything less will only lead to continuing degradation of the Murray-Darling Basin. If Mr Taylor cannot give this commitment, it is yet further evidence of the need to declare a State of Emergency with respect to the Basin”.