As you’ve probably heard, the very short version is that rather than the 3-4000 gigalitres that was proposed to be returned to the river in the original discussion paper, the new proposal is for 2,750 gigalitres to be returned to the river when compared to the 2009 baseline. In fact, there will be only an additional 1500GL above that returned by September 2011.

As I understand it, however, the big differences between the original proposal and this version are in the northern half of the Murray-Darling Basin. The cuts in the southern half of the basin haven’t changed that much, particularly in catchments like the Murrumbidgee. So, while the overall level of complaint from the farming community might be lower, the noise coming from the catchments facing the biggest cuts is likely to remain very loud.

As John Quiggin notes, it’s an ugly political compromise with lots of money wasted on costly infrastructure, but it’s important to remember that we have come a long way on this issue over the years. Quiggin’s discussion of history prompted some memories of high-school enviornmental science, where I can remember discussing the health of the Murray-Darling. Back in the early 1990s, the idea of returning 1500GL to the river was regarded as environmentalist fantasy stuff, and this was still true ten years later.

However, Environment Victoria’s press release points to an elephant in the room – the report largely ignores the likely effect on water availability of climate change.

Comprehensive analyses of the expected effects of climate change on the Basin don’t appear to be in the public domain, but this CSIRO fact sheet suggests that a “medium climate change scenario” will result in an expectd reduction in water availability of about 1450 GL in the lower Murray by 2030. However, as we’ve discussed on any number of occasions, emissions and temperatures are tracking well above most “median” scenarios used in modelling.

So if any farmers think that this is the last they’ll see of buybacks from the Basin, they’re likely to be very much mistaken.

The Australian Conservation Foundation is unimpressed to say the least. John Quiggin is depressed about it:

By contrast, the situation regarding the Murray Darling Basin has gone from bad to worse to pretty much hopeless. We had everything needed for a plan that made just about everyone better off: more water for the environment, a good deal for farmers who wanted to switch out of irrigation, no compulsory acquisition, and enough spare money sloshing into country towns to more than offset any reduction in agricultural output. Instead, the process was spectacularly mishandled, most notably by the Murray Darling Basin Authority, who managed to scare everyone into thinking the government was about to confiscate their water. That handed power back to the most reactionary irrigator lobby groups who just want to stay on the old, unsustainable, path as long as possible, while extracting as much money as they can from the public purse. The release yesterday of the Windsor Report suggests that they will get their wish. The central point of the report is that the government should abandon all “non-strategic” purchases of water, while pouring even more money into so-called “water-saving” schemes, which will cost 5-10 billion while delivering little if any additional water.

I still don’t get the politics of this. With the singular exception of Tony Windsor, the entire Murray-Darling irrigation area is safe rural Coalition territory. The government shouldn’t have nervous backbenchers whispering into its ear on the issue; there aren’t any. The only part of the Basin where the government actually holds seats, or has a prospect of holding seats (except for the regional centres of Bendigo and Ballarat) is Adelaide, where the politics play in precisely the opposite direction as I understand it.

So why sacrifice good policy to appease farmers who will never in a million years vote for you anyway?

Let’s be grateful for ths temporary respite. But it doesn’t mean the pressure can go off governments. The problems the Basin faces will surely be back.

SABRA LANE: And on the eve of the Productivity Commission handing down a report on water recovery in the Murray-Darling basin, he had this to say about the commission’s reports, saying he met a group of farmers yesterday who admitted they read the reports.

BARNABY JOYCE: These people actually do read the Productivity Commission reports. I don’t know, I use them when I run out of toilet paper but, you know, they actually, they actually use them.

Of course, today, it’s a quip, and he’s very concerned to reiterate that as Shadow Minister for Water, he will actually read the report.

But another remark he made hasn’t garnered the same media attention:

SABRA LANE: On a day when his leader was denouncing the Government for wasting taxpayers’ money, Senator Joyce said the education money would have been better spent building a north-south pipeline, even if that project was worthless.

BARNABY JOYCE: With the money we have wasted on the Building the Education revenue, revolution, the, the blatant economic rip-off, we could have built, definitely built a pipeline from the north to the south, most definitely, we could have done that.

We, we, and even, even if that pipeline had never moved a drop of water, even if it had rusted in the paddock, I would have believed that you would have a greater economic stimulus to our nation than what we’re going to get out of what is a glorified, eclectic of rubbish that is now parked around the back of every school.

I think that’s the clue to Joyce. The instinct of every National Party politician is that any government nation building spending must be a boondoggle. But he wants it spent on his boondoggle. You know, turning back the rivers, fast railway links from nowhere to nowhere, and so on. It’s pure projection.

But the agrarian socialist Senator is very popular around at what remains of Libertarian Central these days. Go figure.

The affected area which is larger than Victoria had a single day total of over 100mm, some totals were up to 200mm. An article in the Courier Mail which I can’t find online tells us that 403,000 gigalitres of rain fell on the area, which spills into the NT, in the 10 days up to March 3. 21 rivers and major creeks are involved. Most of the water will head for the Darling, but some in the west will go into Lake Eyre and the Bulloo and Paroo Rivers flow into substantial wetlands in NSW. In the northeast of the affected area the Dawson is flooding in Taroom, which means it rained in the southern reaches of the Fitzroy Basin which flows into the sea near Rockhampton.

The map in the Courier Mail showed a big fat sausage shape, tilted upwards to the west, from east of Roma to the NT border, and from north of Roma and Charleville south to the NSW border. The sausage tilts upwards from just west of Hungerford, which is just below the green patch on the map SW of Cunnamulla, then up to the SA/NT/Qld junction. I’ve used a Google “Get directions” map from Dulacca, just west of Miles, to Bedourie, north of Birdsville. The hump to Blackall gets cut off.

I reckon it’s about 1300km from west to east. Melbourne to Coffs Harbour is about 1400km. The western half is virtually unpopulated but has some blue blotches in it, which are wetlands when it’s wet.

Roma doesn’t flood all that often. Charleville (population 3,300) on the Warrego River goes under more readily. This time they had two flood peaks a couple of days apart.

The population of the whole area is probably about the equivalent of a Brisbane suburb, so the numbers affected are not large. I’ve heard a figure of 600 homes affected in Charleville and Roma. Both are relatively flat so the flood waters typically do not inundate the whole house. But there have been many stories of heartbreak and businesses ruined, which I do not mean to minimize.

The rain brings the prospect of increased rural production, but damage also. The CM article suggested that 2 million sheep were vulnerable. Roads would be washed out, some dam banks burst and many fences flattened. Some rural homesteads and associated farm buildings were flooded.

Now that the floods have moved south, cotton crops are vulnerable. Apparently cotton can’t survive beyond one day’s inundation. Cotton is also grown in the Dawson Valley.

When the vast Gulf Country was inundated last summer in North Queensland, the water lasted 6 to 8 weeks. Over large tracts the grass was killed completely. Late last year I saw images of country with scarcely a skerrick of grass growing. I doubt that there will be a similar problem this time. Images show incredible swathes of green.

Many records have been broken. In St George (population 3,800) I understand the flood peaked today at 13.5 metres, 0.4m above the 1890 record. 14 metres had been expected and there was talk of 80% of the town being flooded. At 13.5 apparently only a few hundred homes were affected.

The floods are good news for the Murray-Darling system. On Stateline on Friday (March 5) Prof Mike Young explained how it works. Apparently the Darling catchment in NSW had a thorough wetting in January with rain from Dubbo to the Qld border. A meeting was held and some water more than the formula required was let through to replenish the lower Murray, which is in a deal of trouble. The same may well happen this time.

He said of the Qld authorities in relation to how much is kept in storages:

They don’t have a lot of control, but they do have some control.

Not sure exactly what he meant, but my impression is that the water involved is vastly more than any Qld farm storages. I gather that storage dams are well and truly full. In normal times I understand that the Darling only contributes 10% to the MD system and Qld half of that. So this water should be a significant bonus. Most of the affected area has had more than the annual rainfall. So if you think of an area bigger than Victoria with maybe half a metre of water, that’s a lot of water.

There has been quite a bit of rain elsewhere. If Peter Garrett hadn’t shut her up Anna Bligh would be telling us how many times over the Traveston dam would have filled. SEQ major dams, which had dipped below 70% earlier in the year, now stand at 85.4%, a level I think not seen this century.

This is what Broadway Street, The Gabba looked like on Tuesday February 17:

That was from a half hour dump roughly twice as large as Melbourne had yesterday sans the hail.

On the Queensland floods there is quite a lot of vision On the Stateline program for March 5. You can see photos that Kelly Higgins-Devine of local radio sent back here.

Courier Mail galleries are here and here.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned climate change. So far I haven’t heard an explanation as to why we should be getting all this wet weather during an El Niño. But here in SEQ it wouldn’t surprise if the rain suddenly stopped and we got next to nothing for a few months. That’s just the way things happen.

Update: Here’s a map of the eastern part of the affected area:

If you go to Google Images and search Darling River map you’ll find plenty. This one is perhaps the best of the whole MD basin, this one shows the subsystems within the basin. The floods have been in the Warrego-Paroo and the Maranoa-Balonne, plus the Dawson to the north of the eastern part and the western rivers and creeks that flow into Lake Eyre. The Border Rivers do not seem to have been a problem.

Update 2: Here’s a photo supplied by still@downfall:

The photo taken facing north, straight ahead is St George (Moonie River in distance) and the turn on the right is to Goondiwindi.

Update 3: BOM have done a special report on what they call “A significant rainfall event for central and eastern Australia”. This map shows the 10-day rainfall from 22 February to 3 march 2010:

They’ve also done a special on the Melbourne thunderstorms with a sequence of satellite images showing the severe rain cells.

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”.

For a start, I was under the impression that there’s essentially bugger-all physical water available on the market to buy back at the moment, so bringing forward the buyback of water entitlements doesn’t actually accelerate the return of water to the environment.

Second, payments to irrigators through the buyback and structural adjustment schemes, during a drought, doesn’t seem like it’s a good way to encourage consumption and investments. Most of the money will be used to pay off debt, rather than invested (if you were an irrigator, would you invest a dollar in your business at the moment?) or consumed. Paying off debt might be good for the farmers but wouldn’t seem to achieve the kind of “multiplier effect” that is the holy grail of all these schemes.

As far as bringing forward infrastructure spending, in principle that seems to be in line with what the experts are recommending, but it’s very different to the kind of small-scale projects that are being provided for with this bill. It seems, instead, to be the kind of large-scale, elaborate infrastructure that is being dealt with (hopefully) more systematically by the Infrastructure Australia process. As others have noted, this smells like an American-style earmark.

The Murray-Darling needs help, and it seems that economic stimulus is a good idea. But, on first glance, it doesn’t seem like a particularly sensible way of doing either.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has dashed the Government’s hopes of implementing its $42 billion economic stimulus package by voting to reject it.

Earlier today the passage of the legislation appeared doomed as Senator Nick Xenophon vowed he would not support the package without the inclusion of an amendment to bring forward funds to save the Murray-Darling Basin.

Peter Martin’s take: “Malcolm Turnbull no longer has the best of both worlds. He opposed the package, and it got rejected.”

Earlier, the Greens had negotiated a number of what seem to be quite sensible amendments to the package, knocking off some of the bonus for higher-income earners, to spend on things like bike paths and making a bonus available to a greater proportion of the unemployed. Pensions are also under review for the Budget.

In any case, the fun and games really begin now.

Elsewhere: Possum [h/t comments]

Update: some thoughts on the merits of Xenophon’s proposals.

Update [by MB]: A post on the politics of today’s developments.