New Murray-Darling Basin Authority chairman Craig Knowles has acknowledged the long-held belief that his appointment symbolised the end of the guide to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in its current form.
“I have very little ownership of the guide. If there’s anything useful in it to salvage, I’ll use it… But by and large, I think both symbolically and I would hope to think practically, the appointment of me as the new chairman is designed to send some messages into communities right around the basin and indeed right around the nation.”
This week shock jock Alan Jones spoke about the frustrations of farmers with the guide in its current plan and interviewed Knowles, where both slammed the current guide to the plan.
Knowles criticised former chairman MDBA Mike Taylor and the much-maligned community consultations, saying “you wouldn’t have wanted to see a big shemozzle if you tried”. Jones commented on the large number of rain and flooding throughout the Murray-Darling region and questioned why water buying was needed. “Some of it [the science the guide was based on] was against the backdrop of one of our most severe droughts in generation” noted Knowles, adding “but there will be another drought.”
“I don’t want to air too much dirty linen in public if necessary” Knowles told Jones, as both questioned the numbers of fish stock levels mentioned in the guide and other apparent issues with the science in the plan.
“My pathway ahead is going to have greater respect for localism,” said Knowles, as he noted the role of local communities in future discussions about the Murray-Darling Plan. “Of course you need good environmental management, but you need to do it in the context. It’s a healthy, working basin.”
It’s going to be a difficult balance for Knowles to negotiate the environmental and economic issues.
Meanwhile, head of the federal parliamentary group examining the Murray-Darling Basin plan, MP Tony Windsor, has called for calm, saying that misinformation is making regional communities hysterical.
“The message I’ve been trying to deliver to them particularly — we were in Griffith in New South Wales and people were actually frightened into believing that someone was going to come along and remove their livelihoods from them — that’s not possible, no-one has any intention of doing that”
Board member Dr Diana Day announced her resignation several weeks ago, after Knowles told board members that if they didn’t support his intentions, then they should leave. As the press release at the time read:
“Developing the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is a critical role undertaken by the Authority. As is well known, following my appointment I asked all Authority members to support the development of an effective Basin Plan in consultation with States, Territories and communities within the framework of the Water Act. I have appreciated Authority members considering my request. The remaining Authority members have committed to progressing further development of the Basin Plan to ensure a healthy working basin for the future.”
Day was one of only two women on the board. She was introduced by the Murray Darling Basin Authority as:
Dr Diana Day is a physical and social scientist with extensive academic, board and public administration experience. She has expertise in water and catchment management and futures, hydrology, water quality and erosion processes, cultural and environmental water issues, community participation in water planning, and agribusiness research strategies for natural resources sustainability.
A search is currently on for her replacement.
But is it back to square one for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan?
UPDATE
Adelaide Advertiser has an interesting story today, discussing the CSIRO’s submission to the MDBA, which criticised the science used in the guide to the plan:
“…the CSIRO has highlighted a lack of rigour in the analysis leading to an overstatement of the environmental benefits of increased water flows and an underappreciation of the negative economic impacts of taking water from irrigators.
The critique is contained in correspondence from Ian Prosser, science director of the CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, to MDBA chief executive Rob Freeman on December 17 last year.
It states: “There are a number of areas where our view is that what is documented in the guide either does not represent best available science, or does not represent appropriate application of best available science in the context of the Basin Plan and the wider context of the National Water Initiative.”
5 Comments
Looks like the pack-rape of the Murray will resume shortly.
I can hear the utes revving…there’ll be a bit of circle work, then a slab…
Frank:
Care to tell me what your version of the characterisation of the problem, and your version of the soution is? From my Millenarian viewpoint, if it needs a lot of petrol to function then it’s not a part of the solution. As a result my urban arse thinks that it isn’t worth my mental effort on the murray darling, and my physical effort is not really possible seeing as I’m such a long way away.
Convince me otherwise.
If Amber J. had simply reworded the title of this piece (eg “changing climate on the Murray”…”Murray-Darling climate wars”…) there’d be 784 posts here…
Until the cult is dead, the Right will hold sway and nothing coherent will be done either about global warming or the innumerable abuses of the environment.
When the Right takes power, the abuses will escalate. Even civilised Baillieu couldn’t keep the rednecks’ cattle out of the national alpine park…that’s our future…Tony Burke (much underrated) will kick them out for now. But they’ll be back when Gillard is restored to her rightful place: an historical footnote.
We need a cartoon on “the unintended consequences of Bob Brown”.
Amber – congratulations on the series of articles that you’ve arranged and written on the MDB Plan. They have been very informative, and if there were more contributions along these lines it would go a long to facilitating a more rational and coherent debate on this vital issue.
Frank@ I have to ask, what particular ‘cult’ are you talking about when you say Until the cult is dead,
Looking up ‘Cult’ in freedictionary I get this:
1.
a. A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.
b. The followers of such a religion or sect.
2. A system or community of religious worship and ritual.
3. The formal means of expressing religious reverence; religious ceremony and ritual.
4. A usually nonscientific method or regimen claimed by its originator to have exclusive or exceptional power in curing a particular disease.
5.
a. Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.
b. The object of such devotion.
6. An exclusive group of persons sharing an esoteric, usually artistic or intellectual interest.
Happy to hear what/who you are talking about.