Murray river. Save or forget ?

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rayven said:
What wil be the impact on the price of food if the river system fails?........
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exactly ... and we were really only another bad rainfall year in the catchments away from worsening?

... the Coorong is already stuffed, riverbanks in SA collapsing, Lake Albert was disconnected from the river and Lake Alexandria (which in itself was below sea level and cut-off from the Goolwa channel), a weir was almost started at the bottom of the main river at Wellington (SA) to just name a few issues pointing to a dying river system.

I appreciate that the authority plan has pain but if everyone helps and not be selfish (that includes illegal siphoning, Medindie lakes and other dubious storage rules, open irrigation channels where SA irrigators have already put effeciencies in place yet are being asked to take bigger cuts than eastern states) we can all keep the river and irrigators and communities healthy!

This year's good rains everywhere has brought us some time but we must not waste it ... altho its taken 100+ years since federation to have one Murray authority and a draft plan so I wont hold my breath for states to not have self interest and make decisions fair to everyone incluiding the environment.
 
Papa G said:
Good. **** off unsustainable farmers. Can we **** off North Melbourne while we are at it?
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Your club and your state would go before North or Victoria Papa G, but don't let one of your rants get in the way will you now??

How are all those dollars your state gets to keep it afloat from the other states going?
 

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Caesar said:
Judgemental? Sure. Emotional? Hardly. I merely think it's exactly that kind of casual attitude to jobs which helps lead to messes like Wild Rivers.

You could engage substantively if you feel like it's an unfair characterisation.
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Need to be more serious about 1000 jobs spread across 1000s of kilometres I guess.
 
nivek48 said:
exactly ... and we were really only another bad rainfall year in the catchments away from worsening?
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SA actualy ran out of water.......I don't think people outside of SA realise that. I don't think people realised the salinity levels of the water being taken for human consumption at Morgan..Last sumer it was announced that there was enough water to see SA threw the summer, but we required rains upstream to get it here because there was not enough flow.
Luckily tropical storms (that cant be relied on) provided that.
SA years ago started planning importing bottled water in case we did run out.....

Whats quite surreal is SA is the defence industry hub of Australia, yet we cant gaurntee water supply to her because we use the water to grow rice and cotton that we send to what most consider our biggest regional threats. If SA runs out of water or something happens to it?
Then there's the water BHP at Whyalla drains from the Murray....but we wont go there will we?
 
GuruJane said:
Cop out.

Answer the question.

What benefit did the government see in deliberately setting the farmers alight instead of neutralising the issue at the same time it released the guide?
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1jasonoz said:
No i am not actually.

These farming communities have known that this government and the previous Government have been investigating various means to increase water flows down the Murray, increased water productivity by farmers, water buybacks ($10 billion was allocated by the previous government), and that various studies were being produced in regards to usage of water, and the viability of communities along the Murray Darling systems-to now have the line that this was unexpected is amateur from the Coalition supporters on here.

Oh and i see you have run out the Socio-economic line a few times, do you even know what a socio-economic study is, and have you ever done one before?
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Agree with Jason here. Like I said, it has been done to death. Been done a hundred times before. I have an EndNote file full of the junk. Another study is just totally meaningless.

Caesar said:
Other workers in Australia can generally find some sort of work in their city of residence.

Scrapping 1000 jobs in metro areas is not going to devastate a region's economy.
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Plenty of work in the agricultural sector.

And there are plenty of industries in metro areas that would be wiped out with 1000 job losses. Such a croc of shit argument.

I had to make probably the largest distance wise move you can make in Australia, to find work in my industry. Why are people in rural Australia always seemingly in this "privileged" position where they aren't under the same pressures, and living under the same expectations as everyone else in society? :confused:

How many people work 1000s of K's out of Perth when they live in Perth?

That argument holds no water.
 
Did I say same industry? If you want to stay in a metro city and you're tertiary qualified, when push comes to shove you can usually find something - even if you have to change careers and take a big pay cut.

When jobs disappear in a rural community, there's generally nothing else.
 
Caesar said:
Did I say same industry? If you want to stay in a metro city and you're tertiary qualified, when push comes to shove you can usually find something - even if you have to change careers and take a big pay cut.

When jobs disappear in a rural community, there's generally nothing else.
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Try telling that to a 50 something year old male.

It's no different.
 
Well, I did say 'usually'. Being an older worker is a problem anywhere. We're talking in generalities here though.

And it's not like tertiary-educated people over 50 in cities always have to move when they lose their jobs. A lot of times they elect to. My father had a few local offers when he was laid off in his late 50s, but they were at a much lower level than what he wanted. As a result, he went west as well.

That option often doesn't exist in rural areas even for younger people.
 
rayven said:
SA actualy ran out of water.......I don't think people outside of SA realise that. I don't think people realised the salinity levels of the water being taken for human consumption at Morgan..Last sumer it was announced that there was enough water to see SA threw the summer, but we required rains upstream to get it here because there was not enough flow.
Luckily tropical storms (that cant be relied on) provided that.
SA years ago started planning importing bottled water in case we did run out.....

Whats quite surreal is SA is the defence industry hub of Australia, yet we cant gaurntee water supply to her because we use the water to grow rice and cotton that we send to what most consider our biggest regional threats. If SA runs out of water or something happens to it?
Then there's the water BHP at Whyalla drains from the Murray....but we wont go there will we?
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You're wasting your time, nobody outside of SA gives a shit about the water situation in SA, especially on this forum.....and especially politicians. A few yokels burned some paper...better let the murray die.
 
Caesar said:
Well, I did say 'usually'. Being an older worker is a problem anywhere. We're talking in generalities here though.

And it's not like tertiary-educated people over 50 in cities always have to move when they lose their jobs. A lot of times they elect to. My father had a few local offers when he was laid off in his late 50s, but they were at a much lower level than what he wanted. As a result, he went west as well.

That option often doesn't exist in rural areas even for younger people.
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Over irrigation in the murray is a bit like coal mining in the UK in the 70's.

We all know its stuffed. We all know there will be some human cost, and we all know if fixed we'll all be better off. We just need a Thatcher to sort it out.
 

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rayven said:
Pillaging the Murray Darling basin as it is being, has been and appears will be is very very bad for rural jobs.
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Well there obviously needs to some cap on the water farmers uses. I disgusted by Doctor Jolly's comment that the jobs lost in rural areas won't matter. There is too much overcrowding in the major cities already whilst we should be promoting people to live in rural areas, particularly immigrants and asylum seekers.
 
AsianWithAFro said:
Well there obviously needs to some cap on the water farmers uses. I disgusted by Doctor Jolly's comment that the jobs lost in rural areas won't matter. There is too much overcrowding in the major cities already whilst we should be promoting people to live in rural areas, particularly immigrants and asylum seekers.
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What about the jobs that will be lost downstream when there is nothing left. Alot of towns rely on river tourism.

I know, i know...jobs in NSW are more important than jobs in SA.
 
AsianWithAFro said:
There is too much overcrowding in the major cities already whilst we should be promoting people to live in rural areas, particularly immigrants and asylum seekers.
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No water out here (i live in a rural area) not much work apart fom the Mining industry that basicly is in the arid lands, I do get what your saying though.

The SA goverment has been jumping up and down for nearly a decade over the state of the Murray Darling basin but i find it a touch hypocritical, they are rezoning some of this land mass's finest argriculture land for housing estates, seem to bending over backwards to BHP and related companies for expansions in the rural areas that disregards common sense towards management of eco systems...
Practise what you preach would be a good start!
 
Schism said:
What about the jobs that will be lost downstream when there is nothing left. Alot of towns rely on river tourism.

.
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I know a bloke who owns a buisness on the main street of a town alot of the traffic/tourists in the warmer months go threw on thier way to the Murray.......early this decade it was speed boats and jet ski's, kayaks and the like being towed past his establishment...almost in convoy porportions some weekends so he would say, year by year its slowly dwindled to be mostly motor bikes and mountain bikes and plain campers...............
 
Chops_a_must said:
Agree with Jason here. Like I said, it has been done to death. Been done a hundred times before. I have an EndNote file full of the junk. Another study is just totally meaningless.
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You post as though you know what you are talking about but in fact you
don't.

Agency wrong on farmers' rights
Patricia Karvelas : The Australian October 26, 2010 12:00AM

LEGAL advice to the government has found the Water Act does not put environmental needs ahead of the wellbeing of farmers and regions.
and requires social and economic outcomes to be considered.

The advice from the Australian Government Solicitor overturns the claims of the Murray Darling Basin Authority that the act did not give it enough scope to consider the socioeconomic impact of recommending a 27 to 37 per cent cut to water allocations for farmers across the basin.

The advice says that the act, passed by the Howard government in 2007, determines that the MDBA consider the use of basin water in a way that "optimises economic, social and environmental outcomes".

Water Minister Tony Burke sought the advice last week after a bush revolt against the MDBA recommendations to boost environmental flows, in a long-awaited guide of draft recommendations released on October 8. Mr Burke, who had been prepared to change the act, said yesterday MDBA chairman Mike Taylor's interpretation that the legislation did not allow the authority to fully take account of social and economic issues was "not supported by this legal advice at all".
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Govt not only stuffed up the release of the gide, it also stacked the authority with environmentalists. Now it is looking incompetent. Again. The guide has to be thrown in the bin.

Plenty of work in the agricultural sector.

And there are plenty of industries in metro areas that would be wiped out with 1000 job losses. Such a croc of shit argument.

I had to make probably the largest distance wise move you can make in Australia, to find work in my industry. Why are people in rural Australia always seemingly in this "privileged" position where they aren't under the same pressures, and living under the same expectations as everyone else in society? :confused:

How many people work 1000s of K's out of Perth when they live in Perth?

That argument holds no water.
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Tell that to Tony Burke.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...ns-deep-newspoll/story-fn59niix-1225943472603

You have no idea at all.
 
GuruJane said:
I think the term is pwned?
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Hardly.

You've quoted a whole bunch of stuff irrelevant to the point you've tried to make, despite the fact I'm already aware of what you have quoted.

Either prove that socio-economic studies in all walks haven't been done to death in rural and regional areas; stop the personal attacks; or GTFO.
 
Doctor Jolly said:
Not sure if the liberals have officially come out against the water buy backs or not yet, but what do my fellow bigfootians think of the proposal.

I used to live near the river as a kid, and last year went back for the first time in 10 years and did a 3 day kayak trip down the old man murray. Things didnt look good, but amazing how the people's emotions were tied to the state of the river.

Anyway, the main arguments against restoring the rivers health seem to be:
- Lose jobs. Australia has an excess of jobs, so an impact of 1000 or so wont make much difference.
- Small town shrink - They've been shrinking for ages
- Food prices go up - Probably, but if it aint sustainable, they are going to go up anyway eventually.

It will obviously be a nasty short term impact, but seem to me the real fault lies in the over allocation of water in the first place. This lead to the false hope that everyone could get more water out than was avaliable.
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Forget the murray, it's ****ed.

we're only keeping it for a romantic notion rooted 150 years ago.

i'm afraid it is too far gone - but there's votes to be had so we see the money being wasted on it.
 
Big John said:
Realistically there needs to be cuts to the amount of water taken out for irrigation.

Part I find interesting is that most farmers have probably been recieving less water for the past 10 years than what the proposed reductions have been. Will be interesting to see how it plays out, both in the parliament and for the actual result.
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Isn't it something like 65% less water in recent times but the region have only produced 5% less food. or something like that.
 

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