Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

Murray-Gate: Some Questions for Media Watch

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ABC News Watch is unsure of the motivation behind Media Watch’s inquiries regarding my research on the Murray River. Based on their understanding, none of the 11 members of the Media Watch team have the scientific qualifications, or necessary scientific experience, to comment or judge the science behind the policy debate about the Murray River.

ABC News Watch today put 15 questions to Media Watch about what it is calling Murray-Gate.

Questions are here: http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com.au/

They are good questions. But what’s the deadline? When will the questions be answered? I was expected to give immediate answers to Media Watch. I think Media Watch should have until 5pm tomorrow, Friday.

Read more here: http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com.au/

Salt Water, Crocodiles and the Lower Lakes: In Perspective

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JO NOVA has posted on the Murray and Media Watch with comment:

“She [Jennifer Marohasy] wants to restore the estuary to its estuarine (salty) form. The end of Australia’s biggest river (the Murray) has barrages across it, to stop the salt water entering. The farmers near the end now depend on the freshwater, just as the farmers in the middle of the long river depend on the highly variable water there too. This is a big policy dog-fight I’m not in on. But I suspect if someone were suggesting putting barrages across the Yarra, the Swan or the Brisbane, the Greens and the ABC would not be attacking people who opposed the barrages. There is no higher principle or policy sense at work here.”

Read more here:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/jennifer-marohasy-and-abcs-mediawatch-tribal-warfare/

Charles Bourbaki made comment in the thread:

“Australia is one of those rare countries where the twice daily tidal influx has no influence on our estuarine rivers. Saltwater crocodiles are never seen in them and people are safe swimming many miles inland. The scientists at Media Watch know this and are quite rightly asking questions.”

I’m so used to having to defend my position and explain that there would be tidal inflows without the barrages that I didn’t get the sarcasm and left comment suggesting I have absolutely no sense of humour.

Thanks Jo and Charles for helping to get some much-needed perspective back into this issue – at least for me.

And the following letter sent into the Victor Harbour Times (a newspaper read by Lake Alexandrina residents) last autumn provides a very local perspective:

Sky High Salinity & SA Water
Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Re the statements by SA [South Australia] Water spokesperson published last week in the Times.

He started absolutely spot on with “The barrages are designed to protect water quality in the River Murray & Lower Lakes by providing a physical barrier between the fresh water in the Lower lakes & the saline water in the Coorong.”

This is exactly what SA Water is failing to do. They are maintaining too low a level upstream of the barrages. Currently levels US Goolwa barrage are fluctuating on the tide (Tuesday 31st between .28 metre & .54m). When a high tide and southerly wind arrive, like the .77m of the 24th May we have massive entry of saltwater. This is not a minor “some salt water entry”. Neat salt water reached as far as midway between Point McLeay and Point Sturt. There is large loss of freshwater dependent aquatic life along with loss of water by irrigators who receive no warning. Hope everyones auto watering systems for stock & irrigation were off.

It is not all flushed out in the following days. A week later we have salinity from 2,8000 at Clayton to 2,000 at Goolwa. Currency Creek went to almost 10,000 at the peak and will probably take months to come back down with the regulator limiting the flow.

There should no longer be a large number of gates open, flows are now down to 24,00Ml/day from some 80.000 at the end of February this year.

Two thirds of the gates should be closed with a level maintained around .5 – .6m.

Lets hope when they do eventually close the gates they have fixed the barrages, to prevent the saltwater leakage experienced last year. Have any capital works been done? Perhaps it’s not too late for maybe rubber strips between the joints in the logs.

The barrages needs to be managed to do what they were built for so as to benefit the Lakes community rather minimise SA Water’s costs & manpower requirement.

Ideally the level should be raised as much as possible to maxmise the flow into Lake Albert, Currency Creek and other salty wetlands. When all full level should be lowered to a safe level depending on sea tides and wind forecast. This cycle is then repeated in order to get maximum freshwater exchange into these areas.

Thanks
George Bennett

PS Sunday evening looks a fair chance for another good dose of saltwater.

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Thanks to CJ for finding the newspaper clipping for me… again.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Two Questions for Your Federal Parliamentarian

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WE all know that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the main source of news and information for many Australians. The ABC is funded and owned by the government, but the ABC is apparently editorially independent as a consequence of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983.

So, who is the ABC accountable to? Certainly not to you or me.

The ABC, for all practical purposes, is exempt from the normal scrutiny that can be applied to government-funded institutions and departments. In particular the ABC’s programming material is exempt from Freedom of Information Requests [1].

So, the ABC can deploy its staff to spend hours and hours phoning people about me, asking the most intimate and bizarre questions and volunteering information to the same people that has no basis in fact. What can I do about it? Absolutely nothing.

Last week the ABC phoned around to get snips of fact about me that it could intertwine with lies with a plan for a national broadcast Monday night on its Media Watch program. I tried to head-that-off with full and frank answers to the many questions they asked me [2]. Indeed I provided them with a lot of information that was none of their business.

But not content with all of that, this week ABC journalists and researchers continue with the same activity; they continue to phone about. And from the feedback I have received from those the ABC has phoned: they continue to peddle misinformation about me, and misinformation about the natural history of the Murray River.

These activities are undertaken at tax payer expense, but there is no way I can find out who specifically they are phoning, or what specifically they are telling people. [3]

Questions need to be asked in the Australian Parliament about this exemption and about the ABCs continual harassment of me for daring to suggest that it is in the national interest for the Murray River’s estuary to be restored – for the 7.6 kilometres of concrete sea dyke to be removed from the bottom of the Murray Darling basin. [4]

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[1] ABC FOI – You can’t open the chamber of secrets
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/abc-foi-you-cant-open-chamber-of.html

“For those considering an FOI request to the ABC for program related material, such as internal correspondence that might provide an insight into the way errors get into the ABC’s editorial process, beware of a clause in the FOI act that lists the ABC as an exempt agency with respect to documents “in relation to its program material and datacasting content” (Part II of schedule 2)…

“ABC cite ABC v University of Technology Sydney in relationship to this and from the ruling it seems the only way to open the vault is for the FOI ACT to be amended to allow access to ABC documents.”

[2] Media Watch Under Scrutiny
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2012/03/media-watch-under-scrutiny-2/

[3] Most government organisations are covered by a set of generally applicable exemptions many of which require a balancing of public interest. The ABC, however, could assign 10 people to research me and my activities and there would be nothing I could do about it or find out about it.

[4] Podcast available at the Sydney Institute http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/speaker/jennifer-marohasy/

Watching Her Watching Them: Graham Young

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Jennifer Marohasy has been campaigning to have the barrages – a form of dam – removed from what most of us would think of as the mouth of the River Murray. While much has been made of the fact that the Murray often doesn’t run into the sea, hardly anyone is aware that it is stopped from doing that by a series of dams.

During the Federation plus 100 drought that we have just experienced, water was being siphoned off from higher up the Murray and Darling to keep the lakes at the mouth of the Murray full. If they had been in their natural state the tide would have done that for free, and saved a considerable amount of water for upstream communities.

On Line Opinion first published Jennifer’s controversial views on the lower lakes in August 2008.[1] We did that because they made sense. The current arrangements with the lakes are obviously artificial, and their listing as a RAMSAR wetland is just as obviously mistaken.

Media Watch contacted Marohasy on Friday seeking answers to a list of questions with the intention of going to air tonight. If another program behaved like this they would run the risk of making a star appearance on Media Watch. Marohasy formed the opinion that the story had already been written. That seems a reasonable point of view.

Certainly the questions that Media Watch put to Marohasy indicated that they either had done no independent research about the lakes, or were incapable of understanding simple physical concepts. The questions about her sources of income were bizarre and mostly irrelevant, but obviously intended to frame her as a stooge for some group or another…

Read more here: //www.ambitgambit.com/2012/03/12/media-watching-her-watching-them/

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Saving the Coorong by Restoring Its Native State Available Online here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7762

Minister Caica Ignorant of History of Lake Alexandrina

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Following the release of my recent technical report, Plugging the Murray’s Mouth: The Interrupted Evolution of a Barrier Estuary [1], the South Australian water minister, Paul Caica, made public comment that Lake Alexandrina has been a “predominately freshwater environment for the last 7,000 years”. The Minister also indicated that my claim that Lake Alexandrina was once part of an estuary is “myth and not supported by science.”[2]

In fact the relevant scientific literature, as published in peer-reviewed journals, indicates that the Lower Lakes were estuarine prior to the erection of the viagra sea dykes, known locally as barrages. But it is also revealing to simply consider the history of the region. The first map of Lake Alexandrina, drawn by John Arrowsmith in 1838 based on reports of water quality from the famous British explorer Charles Sturt, shows the waters of Lake Alexandrina to transition from salt to brackish to fresh.


[This map has been copied from a zoom here http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm2633]

It appears that the South Australian government is also ignorant of the history of the lake with comment in important planning documents that: “The Lower Lakes have been predominantly freshwater for the last 7,000 years and that seawater ingressions, when they did occur, did not extend north of Point Sturt.”[3]

Point Sturt is clearly marked on the 1838 map. The map clearly shows that seawater ingressions extended into the main body of the lake turning the water brackish.

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[1] The report can be downloaded here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/publications/

[2] Water must mix in the Lower Lakes, says new Murray-Darling report. Adelaide Advertiser, February 24, 2012. Available online at http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/water-must-mix-in-the-lower-lakes-says-new-murray-darling-report/story-e6frea83-1226281052851

[3] Securing the Future: A Long-term plan for the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth, June 2010, Government of South Australia. Available online as a 13mb pdf.

 

About the Murray River’s Estuary: Full Text of My Address to the Sydney Institute

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AT the very bottom of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin is a vast coastal lagoon that was once connected to the Southern Ocean. The region was home for the Ngarrindjeri, who wore possum skin coats and loved to tell stories. One of their storiesii is about greed and the environment and also the consequences of telling lies.

Two men set off in their bark canoe for the Ngiakkung, a shallow, reed-filled corner of the lagoon their tribe favoured for fishing. That day thukeri, or bream, were so plentiful that the fish all but hopped into the canoe. Having acquired a substantial haul, one said, “Hey brother, we have plenty of thukeri. Let’s paddle to the shore before we sink.” But his friend, for whom plenty was never enough, wanted to keep on fishing. The fish piled up even higher in the canoe, which sank even lower.

Eventually, they paddled towards the shore, where a stranger stood. “Hey brothers, I’m hungry,” he called out, “Have you got any fish to share?”

The rapacious one replied, “No, we haven’t. Just enough to feed our families.”

As the stranger turned to walk away, the men started laughing behind their hands. The stranger heard them and said, “You have plenty of fish, but because you are greedy and don’t want to share, you will never enjoy the thukeri again.” When the men reached the bank, they found the fish they had caught were thin and full of sharp bones.

They told their families what had happened. The old people said that the stranger was the Great Spirit Ngurunderi. From then on, for all time, the Ngarrindjeri people would be punished. Today, whenever Ngarrindjeri catch a bony bream, they are reminded of long ago, when Ngurunderi taught them a lesson.

During the recent drought, the waters of Ngiakkung, a place now called Loveday Bay, dried up. No one could ever remember the lagoon, now called Lake Alexandrina, drying up before.

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