In a move that will undoubtedly go down well with their constituents, the South Australian government is going to sue the “upstream states” in the High Court to force trade in Murray-Darling Basin water to be de-restricted. Mike Rann’s statement to the states that they want the High Court to invalidate Victoria’s 4% cap on water trading , which prevents more than 4% of the water in a particular irrigation system being sold out of that system in any one year.
John Quiggin’s view is that the restrictions are undesirable, and mainly benefit irrigation companies at the expense of the river and farmers themselves. I’m not sure that’s the whole story; if water is traded out of an irrigation district, the burden of maintaining the infrastructure will be shared amongst fewer farmers, and ultimately render those districts financially unsustainable. Frankly, I suspect that such districts are probably unsustainable anyway, but the Victorian government hasn’t been brave enough to bite that particular bullet yet. In any case, John also speculates that the basis of the challenge will be section 92 of the Constitution, which states:
On the imposition of uniform duties of customs, trade, commerce, and intercourse among the States, whether by means of internal carriage or ocean navigation, shall be absolutely free.
I wonder whether line of argument this is going to run slap-bang into section 100 of the Constitution:
The Commonwealth shall not, by any law or regulation of trade or commerce, abridge the right of a State or of the residents therein to the reasonable use of the waters of rivers for conservation or irrigation.
This clause was heavily argued about in the debates on Federation. The word “reasonable” was inserted only after hard bargaining by the South Australian delegation. Over a century later, I guess that the South Australian government’s case may just hang on how the High Court interprets “reasonable”.
I don’t understand the reference to s100. How are Cth laws relevant?
BBB
My guess (and I’m not a lawyer) that the water trade is under federal law. But I’m just guessing, and furthermore the South Australians haven’t presented their arguments yet.
I’ll be interested to see whether any of the lawbloggers show up and offer an opinion as to what arguments SA might use, and whether they’ve got any realistic chance of success.
Furthermore, there is clearly a trade in water rights happening. Therefore, South Australia would argue that under Section 92 that trade should occur freely across state boundaries.
However, Victoria would say that Section 100 gives them the right to determine reasonable use of their water.
Not a lawyer at all, but I suspect this goes absolutely nowhere.
Not a water policy expert, but my impression is that Vic generally has spent more money and more political capital on fixing up water for the sake of the environment than the other three Murray Darling states combined.
wilful: yeah, I don’t think that arguing Victoria does more the environment will get you far with South Australians. Especially if you’ve been to the mouth at Goolwa. You know the Murray’s going to stop 50km from the coast in the next year or so?
I don’t know what Rann is on about and I wouldn’t trust him to know either.
Similarly I would distrust the relevant persons in the other states and federal spheres.
As far as I know the last Liberal SA state government instituted ‘free trade’ [lovely phrase] of water licences here some years ago which allowed trade of licences along the length of the Murray.
In essence I could buy a water licence from someone in NSW or Vic and/or they could buy mine.
Bloody stupid idea, which resulted in water that was not being used previously starting to be used so that the total able to be taken out of the river was increased and thus helped to cause the present problem.
Madness.
Currently my water quota is 18% [although there are several ficticious elements to that].
I don’t know what the quota for Victorians is, I heard that recently it was in the vicinity of 90% but that would need to be verified.
It is certainly believed by local irrigators here tho’ and they are pissed off about it, and if true they have some sort of valid complaint.
I don’t actually buy into the ‘it’s the bloody cotton/rice growers fault, those bloody Qlders, Cubbie et al” complaint that is common here.
Whilst there is little doubt that upstream grabs as much of water is available [I'm reminded of the seagulls in "Finding Nemo" who chant "Mine! Mine! Mine!]
and wastes it on crap crops before it gets across the border, I reckon we need a non-parochial non states ‘rights’ approach all along the entire system.
SA irrigators are as bad as those upstream. We waste water on crap crops here too.
That’s the major problem, over irrigation and undersupply of water along the entire catchment.
Until that is fixed the problems will remain and probably get worse.
There is only one perspective that will solve the problem, it has been recommended by studies and reports but essentially ignored.
Too hard politically.
That is to treat the entire river as a catchment and drainage basin as nature has organized it.
Firstly, allocate TO THE RIVER the amount of water it requires to be healthy. Which is probably double or treble or even more the current ‘environmental’ flows. [As an aside the river level has dropped more than a metre in my region in the last month or so and the ferry landings are going to need rebuilding so the ferries can operate.]
Secondly, allocate the necessary amount needed for URBAN purposes, after all this is people we are talking about and they need bugger all when you look at the numbers. 2 million or so people use a fraction of the water used for irrigation.
Finally, irrigation can have what is left over.
And if that is not enough to sustain present levels of irrigation, and it won’t be, then something will have to be done about that won’t it?
But the point is that there is simply not enough water for all at the moment and its NOT going to get any better in the future, probably worse.
Finally, things are grim when the problem is having to rely partly on what lawyers reckon.
I’m about 1% optimistic that any good will come out of this move by Rann [he's an opportunistic so and so and we are getting into election mode] and even less optimistic that the courts, lawyers, other states, federal, irrigator lobbies and media will contribute anything positive at all to the scenario.
I’m right pissed off, actually seriously angry and depressed, by all the posturing and bullshit, the greed and selfishness that surrounds this issue.
This river is dying and very few people give a damn.
Shameful.
Damn!
Sorry about the repitition above, I hope you will be tolerant and extract what sense there is in it,
Lousy cut and paste job.
But good post, Hannah’s dad.
Hannah’s Dad: removed the duplicate.
Thanks Laura.
Thanks Robert.
The whole issue reminds me about the old joke relating to world overpopulation where someone says ‘Somewhere in the world there is a woman giving birth every 2 seconds [whatever], what are we going to do about it?
And the smart arse answer is “Find that woman and stop her!”
Well we know what the essence of the problem is with the Murray.
Too many irigators using too much water.
So the smart answer is “Stop them’.
All else is trivia.
Gary S-T at “Public Opinion” has a slightly different take on the Rann move.
http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2009/03/murrrraydarling.php#more
<a href=Here’s what it looks like at its mouth end. As I’ve said there, think of it as a gangrenous toe. If Adelaide is the ankle, you eastern-staters are the groin and the armpit.
I see from that link to Gary S-T’s post that at least one journalist has done what Eastern States journos often do, which is to think that if they throw around (wrongly, again) the word ‘parochial’, it will make anything to do with South Australia magically go away.
Dammit, sorry, I meant here, though you’ll find that other link there as well.
Clearly the comment-posting gods are out in force today.
hannah’s dad, while I entirely agree with your sentiments, it’s equally true for any number of ecological crises we are facing. The environmental answer is staring us in the face – doesn’t make it any easier to implement.
Partly true wilful.
But at least we can, need to, must, talk about how to solve the problem rather than waste time and effort and money running down blind alleys and babbling irrelevancies about markets and efficiencies and trade and what not.
Only by focusing on the cause of the problem[s] will we begin to solve it/them.
In this case:
how do we get the irrigators to stop wasting water?
PC
I was recently involved in a baseline survey for bird life along the south of the river, 200 kms worth of ex-wetlands, from Tailem Bend to Blanchetown.
Its all dead or dying.
All.
Covered in weeds and salt, no birds [well a few dozens over 200 kms compared to tens of thousands previously], trees dying by the thousands, 15 or so mature river reds at my place visibly dying in front of me. Bats, snakes, water rats, tortoises gone. They may never return. Shops and recreation parks and facilities losing trade, trucks diverted cos the ferries can’t carry them.
The enormity of what is happeneing hasn’t struck most people.
We told friends and rellies 3 years ago our lagoon had disappeared and they said “Oh, thats horrible.’
Then they visit and look and see the physical reality not just hear it described in words.
And they say “But the lagoon is gone!!’ in an incredulous voice.
It hits home when they see it.
Nothing like this has ever happened before.
The proposed flooding by seawater of the Lower Lakes, which will destroy them, has not happened in the past 8000 years.
Never before, even in severe droughts, has the migration pattern of birds to the Coorong been so affected that extinctions are a real possibility, already in the process of occurring.
This is a national ecological disaster of international consequence, I’m actually curious as to why the world authorities haven’t got on to it …yet.
And all to protect one sacred species.
Several points -
(i) the time to deal with the problem of low water flows was about ten years ago – that is, before the drought. Victoria, NSW and QLD are not hiding water under the bed. The water being ‘traded’ at present is purely on paper. The irrigators aren’t getting much of it, if any.
It’s simply too risky to send more water down the Murray then is being sent at present. Noone knows when this drought is going to end. Most of the water being stored (and I use the term loosely – most of the storages upstream are at all time lows, some less than 15% of normal capacity) is to ensure town supplies. Send it down the Murray without rains to refill these storages and you’ll have up river towns like Albury without drinking water within the year.
(ii) The constitution leaves water to the States. Under the M-D agreement, all the States have their set allocation of water, which they can’t exceed. In theory, Victoria’s water remains Victoria’s water, even if it is allowed to flow down to the Murray mouth. It can benefit the environment on the way, but technically, SA can’t use it. How Victoria allocates/controls water within its boundaries is entirely its business. Anything else would (IMHO) require a referendum to shift water from the States to the Feds (Howard just used bribery to shut the States up. Won’t work if you threaten something as basic as the State’s right to use water that flows through it. A negotiated agreement may).
Hate to be the pessimist – I would say more a realist – but the only thing that will save the Murray is rain.
There simply ISN’T water elsewhere, and certainly not in Victoria, where I am watching the death of my river flats (normally a foot deep in grass this time of year, only dust now).
Mehitabel: FWIW, I think there’s a bit of water in the more northerly parts of the Basin. However, that water will evaporate long before it reaches the Coorong.
The Victorian and NSW High Country are, like your river flats (which river, by the way?) still pretty much bone-dry.
The Buffalo, Robert, thanks for asking…
Oh, BTW, should have said this earlier as well:
Part of the reason behind the 4% restriction in trade is that trade of water can only go one way in Victoria – that is, I can sell water downstream but I can’t buy it from downstream. So, ultimately, if too much water is sold out of an area it can find itself waterless.
One can imagine that, in desperate circumstances, farmers could sell ALL of their allocation downstream in order to keep themselves afloat – only to find that, when times improve, they can’t capitalise on this due to lack of irrigation water.
Unrestricted trade, under the present scenario, could mean that ultimately ALL water allocated ended up being used in SA.
Personally, having always been an anarchist at heart, the best solution in an ideal world would be to cancel all water licenses and start again from scratch, with water being allocated on a provable needs basis (e.g. I propose to plant this crop on this amount of land, therefore I will need x amount of water).
As a practical person, I recognise that this isn’t possible.
Sorry guys you have missed the main points.
Here are some stats to bore you with.
The Hume Dam, about a half to a third of the storage of Murray water, was nearly 70% full [that is about 2,000,000,000,000 litres or 2,000 gigalitres or 2,000 GL] less than 4 years ago.
Other dams were in the same range.
Where has all that water gone?
To irrigation mainly.
About 90% of it after evaporation.
In an average year [and these figures are a few years old unfortunately] Victoria uses about 1700 GL of Murray water for irrigation, thats about half the capacity, when full, of the Hume.
NSW uses about the same.
Between them they use about 88% of all irrigation water from the Murray system.
SA uses about 7%.
Thats why the dams are so low.
We are taking too much out of them for irrigation, it’s, to coin a phrase, un- bloody-sustainable.
Why use so much?
Here is a clue.
To produce one litre of milk costs about 1700 to 5000 litres of water.
See the problem?
Hannah’s dad, I cruised up and down that stretch of the river several times on family houseboat holidays when I was in my teens in the late 60s and early 70s, and I saw all of those things sitting on the deck or zooming around in the dinghy. It was incredibly beautiful and full of life. I didn’t think to be grateful at the time.
That is, it was me sitting on the deck or in the dinghy, not the bats and tortoises. Syntax is a pitiless thing.
We had a bat detector at our place for a week some years ago back in the good ol’ days when we had water.
Its a recording device which measures the ultra sound calls of bats and then identifies them by those calls.
We had 9 different species of bat flying around for each night of that week, I had no idea there were that many species.
One was Myotis macropus [or adversus], Large-footed Bat, so called because it flies over the smooth lagoon waters trailing its feet in the water and catching tiny fish with the aid of its sonar. It weighs 8 grams for Pete’s sake.
It’s tiny.
There is no lagoon anymore.
Mehitabel@19,
Your personal preference is what will ultimately happen. Annual state water allocations will need to be apportioned on a per season basis with the health of the river being the highest priority. Farming will need to become more communal as against the corporate structure, in order to allow farmers to share more equally in a declining resource.
How is Archie?
Hanna’s dad @23, that is absolutely fascinating.
glad you remember archie, so few people do.
HD, willing (as always) to be corrected but am finding it hard to find data. What I have found suggests: 2003 5% of capacity, 2004 7%, 2007 7%, 2008 13%, 2009 9% (I know from conversations with locals that there was great excitement in 2006 when levels went from 11% to 13% in late spring, but don’t have official figures).
All of this accords with my ‘local knowledge’, which is that after the last big flood event (1998?) the dam was drained for wall strengthening walls and has never refilled since.
Similarly, Eildon Lake has never refilled the area below the Bonnie Doon bridge for at least a decade – the water used to be just below the bridge and now the bottom of the lake, 100 m below, is bare.
My point is not that irrigators and over allocation is not to blame. My point is that there isn’t (ISN’T) water being hidden away anywhere, so there isn’t water to release and save the Murray. Only rain can do that now.
For whatever reason (and I agree with you largely, having fought some of these battles over the last decade) there is not enough water left in the system to save it.
On the other hand, when it was flooding merrily in 1998, NOBODY predicted the length or extent of this drought (not even my climate change scientist friends). Everyone expected that it was a case of belt tightening for a couple of years before situation normal kicked in.
We now know that that wasn’t going to happen but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
So, yes, the river has been over allocated and this is part of the current problem. Victoria took action to claw back these over allocations long before SA and NSW and still, I understand, is the leader when it comes to water saving measures. Even Howard admitted this (his speech on the Water Plan is big on hoeing into NSW, QLD, SA for poor water management – NEVER mentions Victoria in this respect). But another aspect of the problem is that action was taken when it was already too late, and this was because noone foresaw (could foresee) the extent of the current problem.
1) The water allocations do not reflect water actually available. Nor do they reflect the fact that water from floods are pretty much stored rather than flushed into floodplains that is only recently apparent to, er, mainstream science.
2) Victorian rivers have the worst water quality than any rivers on the continent.
I dunno what’s going on, 3 times I’ve tried to post this.
Here goes an abridged version.
NSW* 1,665 Number of gigalitres used by each state….old stats.
VIC** 1,589
SA**** 535
Totals 3,780
To put these numbers in context, Adelaide and much of SA, a population and resultant economy of about 1 million people,uses about 100-150 GL of murray water normally
“How much water is needed to produce food?
CSIRO Land and Water scientists have used precision weighing systems to measure water use by various crops, and the yield from the crops. The following approximate figures were revealed:
To produce one kilogram of oven dry wheat grain, it takes 715 – 750 litres of water
For 1 kg maize, 540 – 630 litres
For 1 kg soybeans, 1650 – 2200 litres
For 1 kg paddy rice, 1550 litres
For 1 kg beef, 50,000 – 100,000 litres
For 1 kg clean wool, 170,000 litres”
——————————————————–
And if you google for “water capacity hume dam november 2005″ you should get the report of the MDBC which puts storage of the Hume at 92% in Nov 2005.
That was well over 2000 GLs.
I don’t think enough peole realize the absolutely enormous numbers associated with water use for irrigation.
Andrew E – source, please? (and not sure what you’re trying to prove, or argue).
HD – aha! thank you. Said I was having difficulty finding 2005 figures. Could quibble about them but yes, they do show that in 2005 there was enough water to solve some problems.
One year of good conditions was not enough to save the Murray then and there is certainly not enough water in the system to save the Murray now.
It’s nice to believe that, when things go pear shaped, someone, somewhere can do something and fix it. More of our human hubris.
In this case, there is nothing that will fix the problem but rain.
Yes, irrigation takes lots and lots of water (hence I’m mildly amused by the NS pipeline drama, which takes relatively little) and I’ve long been an active advocate for better, more efficient water use. Yes, action has to be taken so that water is allocated more sensibly. However, none of this has much bearing on the current situation, which is chronic ongoing lack of water.
Re the whole puport of this thread: I doubt SA has a leg to stand on. What Victoria regulates is trade within Victorian borders of a Victorian asset (that is, sale of shares of Victoria’s agreed allocation of water under the Cap). The only buyers Victoria is being asked to sell water to is the Commonwealth and I doubt that selling things to the Feds is trade between the States.
I googled images for “murray river mouth” and got this. Here is one of the ugliest.
Recently Professor Mike Young came back from an overseas conference saying that other countries in similar latitudes were experiencing similar water runoff deficits. I googled Young and found this interesting site. I downloaded the Reconfiguring the River powerpoint which has a lot of fascinating information. It seems that current inflow roughly equals evaporation. And yes (slide 7) there were earlier extended periods that were very dry prior to 1950, but this dry has come after a 52-year period of pretty good inflows. But they are right, the whole thing needs to be reconfigured.
It doesn’t mean, however, that the current drought is a ‘normal’ anomaly and the good times will return. The fact that what’s happening is in accord with modelling of climate change, but like most climate change effects, well ahead of schedule That gives rise to pessimism. But we just don’t know.
In the future there is the issue of sea level rise. My best guess is 2 metres by 2100. This clever flood map allows you to zoom in on the Murray mouth area. It seems that even with 1 metre the sea starts to spread across the land and back up the river past Murray Bridge, if unchecked. This can’t be good.
This is what I wrote in 2001
Full paper here
Needless to say, it wasn’t done. Most of the research finally got underway in 2007, but full co-operation between the states still hasn’t occurred and research on critical thresholds has not been carried out, though a risk structure has been written in to the 2008 amendments to the Water Act.
I am very bitter and twisted about water policy in Australia; how warnings were ignored. Policymakers and and the large research agencies are both culpable in this regard. Both parties believed that markets would fix short-term issues and climate change too. Despite some latter-day recognition of the enormity of the problem, due to climate shifts much quicker than anticipated, the emphasis is still on managing political risk and saving face, rather than managing environmental/social and dare I say it, economic risk. We are as far away from sustainable management as we have ever been.
The Murray will flow into an esturine lake system at Murray Bridge, in the next few years as the ocean level rises.
SA was granted 1850 high security gigs per year,at the rate of 154 gigs per month to facilitate the navigation of paddlesteamers.It was clearly not envisaged that rail would make paddlesteamers redundant by the 1930′s, the rail gauges are proof of that!.NSW ,Vic and Qld gave this water to SA because the river system was emensly important to trade and developement ,up and down the river.
It is unreasonable to still supply this precious water , every year bar 3 ,for 70 years.Section 100 deals with reasonable use.
OK SA, the global warming people are telling you the ocean will rise and we will recieve less rain,you haven’t even put the Wellngton wier in!
Hannah’s dad – you speak with a clarity sorely lacking in this debate. Somehow we have engineered ourselves into a position where your ideas (i.e., the application of rational thought to the problem) are characterised as extreme and “un-Australian” (because of course anyone who questions the current agricultural system hates freedom).
I tried to make the point about the relative water use of cities versus agriculture back in 2007: link. I think you make it much more clearly and eloquently. Until we recognise that a small change in agricultural use equates to a large change in urban use equates to a huge change in environmental use of water then we will never be able to understand, let alone resolve, this issue.
extreme and “un-Australian”
Oh come on, who said that? Hyperbole isn’t necessary, even from this side of the aisle.
Farmers. Farmers and the Nationals. Not all farmers, but some of them.
Whever people seriously suggest that the river and environmental flows are the primary concern, the conservative agricultural lobby wheels out the whole “farming is part of the fabric of Australian society”-type line and implies that to take water away from agriculture is to destroy our heritage.
Clarity is one thing, reality is another.
I deal with issues all the time, such as this, that every man (and woman) on the street seems to think is easily solved. In reality, if the solution to a problem seems easy, it’s probably wrong.
I’m all for tempering our anthropomorphic view of life, but there also some realities which need to be faced.
If the environment and the river are all important (and I’m not arguing the point) the obvious corrollory (sorry, missspelt, I know) is the removal of all artificial structures which distort the natural flow of water.
That would mean the diversion of part of the present flow down the Murray down the Snowy. It would also mean that there’d be no water down the Murray by now and probably wouldn’t have been the past few summers. It would certainly mean that Adelaide’s water supply would be far less secure.
If you want clarity, then we go back to the simplest solution to solve the present problem: rain.