Bronwen Beechey, Adelaide
On July 28, a public meeting attended by at least 400 people called on all political parties to commit an extra $500 million to save the Murray River.
Organised by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Conservation Council of South Australia, the forum heard a number of speakers describe the dire situation faced by Australia's largest river system.
At present, the Murray's mouth requires 24-hour dredging to keep it open, river redgums are dying and the federal government has listed half the rivers' native fish species as threatened with extinction.
It has been predicted that by 2020 Adelaide's tap water supplies from the Murray will be undrinkable for two days out of five. A recent water quality survey undertaken by high school students from the riverlands found high levels of phosphates, fecal coliform, salinity and turbidity.
The priority issue for the Murray is water flow. The consensus of scientists and conservationists is that a minimum of 1500 gigalitres of additional water flow (equivalent to three times the volume of water in Sydney harbour) annually, plus improvements to infrastructure and water quality, is required to make the Murray a healthy working river.
Achieving this would require a $1.5 billion, 10-year commitment from the commonwealth, state and territory governments to set out a clear timetable for restoring the Murray to health.
The Council Of Australian Governments agreed last November to spend $500 million over five years as a "first step" to return 500 gigalitres of water to six "icon" sites along the Murray. The June COAG meeting undertook to implement this decision, but did not commit any additional government funding to the Murray or any other threatened rivers, nor set a clear timeline for returning overallocated rivers to sustainable levels of water extraction.
The majority of speakers at the public meeting agreed that this "first step" is inadequate. Dr Mike Paton, a terrestrial ecologist from the University of Adelaide, said that the impact of the silting up of the Murray's mouth on the Coorong wetlands is already severe, with migratory bird populations dropping and plant species such as widgeon grass disappearing. He said that if 1500gl was added to environmental flows, "then you could reinstate something like the natural flows and keep the mouth open. We should be doing it now, not in five years' time."
Other speakers at the meeting included river ecologist Keith Walker, CSIRO economist Mike Young, commercial fisher Henry Jones and Matt Rigney from Murray-Darling River Indigenous Nations.
Politicians addressing the meeting included Labor Senator Penny Wong, Liberal Senator Grant Chapman, Greens Senator Bob Brown and representatives from the Democrats and Meg Lees' Australian Progressive Alliance.
Wong said the ALP was committed to providing $150 million in its first year of government to provide 1500gl annually to the Murray.
Brown stated that the federal government had shown a lack of leadership on the issue. He pointed out that the commonwealth had the power, under international environmental treaties, to stop any development that was threatening protected wetlands.
Brown was applauded when he said that the $14 million given by the Coalition government in tax cuts to high income earners could have been used to buy back 1500gl of water allocated to irrigators along the Murray.
Tom Bertuleit, a Socialist Alliance Senate candidate for South Australia, was not invited to speak on the platform but was given an opportunity to speak from the floor. He pointed out that, while no-one could trust the Liberals, the ALP's commitment to the Murray was also questionable given the recent actions of the NSW Labor government in handing over large amounts of Murray water allocations to large corporations involved in commercial rice and cotton farming. These, he argued, are largely responsible for the increased pollution and salinity as well as reducing the river flow.
Questions from the audience focused around how the necessary reduction of water allocations should be carried out. There was criticism expressed at suggestions by Young that "market solutions" such as salinity trading and pollution credits were the best way to achieve these reductions.
Brown argued that the issue shouldn't be left up to the market. "The market has a role to play", he said, "but it should be the tool and not the master".
Rigney pointed out that Indigenous communities in particular would be locked out of playing a role in restoring the Murray to health if purchasing power was to dominate decision making.
"Privatisation and 'market solutions' have contributed to the terrible state that the Murray River is in", Bertuleit commented to Green Left Weekly after the meeting. "The Socialist Alliance supports the call for at least 1500 gigalitres of water annually to be returned to the Murray, starting immediately. The situation demands large-scale emergency plans backed by massive funding, and controlled democratically by all those who have a stake in protecting and preserving our environment."
From Green Left Weekly, August 4, 2004.
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