Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Murray River

Bunyips in Australian Rivers (Part 2)

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ACCORDING to Australian aboriginal mythology Bunyips are monsters that live in rivers.  According to Ron Pike, an Australian who has spent his life working with water from the Murrumbidgee River, much of what is being claimed about Australian rivers is as unreasonable as a belief in Bunyips: 

“The lack of flow volumes in the rivers of the Murray Darling Basin (MDBC) in recent years is not due to irrigation and over extraction.  The facts are that without the storages and the irrigation industries, conditions would have been considerably worse.   Throughout the MDB there is presently more wetland habitat than there would have been had there been no irrigation for the last several years.  It is also wrong to suggest that increasing stream flows by releasing extra water from storages, somehow benefits the environment.   It makes no appreciable difference to the  environment whether the Murrumbidgee at say Narrandera is running at 3,500 megalitres per day or 25,000 megalitres per day. The flows in both cases remain within the banks and do not, and cannot, water the floodplain or most wetlands.

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Australian Parliamentarian, and Sceptic, Banned Prevented from Tabling Climate Data

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DR Dennis Jensen BAppSc (RMIT), MSc (Melb), PhD (Monash) is the only member of the Australian Parliament with any training in science a PhD in a science discipline. 

[As correctly pointed out in the comments following this posting, my brother Jim Turnour, also a member of the Federal Parliament, has a Batchelor of Agricultural Science.  Other members with science and science-related degrees are listed in a comment in the following thread.]    

Yesterday Dr Jensen suggested in the Australian Parliament that many of the current problems facing the Murray Darling Basin are the result of low runoff as a consequence of changed land management practices (including more plantations in the top of catchments), catchment-wide drainage management plans (place in the 1980s and 1990s to lower water tables) and more efficient water use (resulting in less leakage). 

He explained that it was wrong to blame climate change for the low levels in the dams, because there had been no long term decline in rainfall in the Basin. 

Dr Jensen also explained that many of the climate models used to predict regional rainfall, including the CSIRO models (relied upon by Ross Garnaut in his report on climate change to the Australian government), are unreliable and unduly pessimistic.

When Dr Jensen asked to table supporting information in the Parliament by way of charts and tables, the request was denied. 

Much of the information that Dr Jensen was banned from tabling can be found in a recent publication from the IPA entitled ‘What’s Happening to the Murray River?’.

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The picture of Dr Jensen is from his parliamentary website.

Bunyips in Australian Rivers (Part 1)

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IN Aboriginal mythology the Bunyip was also known as Dongus, Kianpratty, Bunyup and Tumbata, depending on the tribal area. However regardless of name he was always evil and emerged from the water in search of prey as he sought to use his supernatural powers to punish evil doers.

While it is easy for modern man to pass this off as superstition, much of what is being claimed in relation to the rivers of the Murray Darling Basin is as unreasonable as a belief in Bunyips.

To begin to understand the ecology and the unique environment of the Murray Darling Basin, we need to revisit some of the observations made by the first explorers after the arrival of white man in Australia.

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Aussie Farmers: Not Beaten by Salt, But Drought and Government Policies

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REMEMBER the stories about how the Murray Darling Basin, the food bowl of Australia, was going to be lost to salt?  Headline after media headline told of imminent ruin from rising water tables bring salt.  

The Riverina, a once rich farming area in south western New South Wales, was considered most affected by this “scourge of salinity”, this “curse of salt”.  

In the next year it is likely that a lot of farmers in this area will walk, will leave the Riverina, but it won’t be because of salt.  Farmers in the Riverina worked with their local water corporation, Murray Irrigation Limited (MIL), and government engineers to solve the salt problem. 

While it was once feared over 300,000 hectares would be lost to salt, by March 2003 the area with shallow water tables had stabilized below 20,000 hectares and is now less than 4,000 hectares. 

Indeed farmers won’t be leaving because of salt.  They will be leaving because of prolonged drought, and government policy. 

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Campaigning for National Parks is Against Australian’s Bush Ethos: Part 1, Buying Back Tooralee

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THERE has been much written about Australia’s national character emerging from a bush ethos: the idea that a specifically Australian outlook emerged first amongst workers in the Australian outback.  Banjo Paterson, perhaps more than any other writer, created and defined this cultural heritage.  His story about the shearer and his sheep (the jumbuck) remains our most popular national song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’.  I grew up on ‘The Man from Snowy River’; a poem about a courageous young horseman who out-rides wild brumbies in the High Country.  

But few Australians now have anything much to do with the bush.  They mostly live in cities, don’t know how to ride a horse and go to the beach for their holidays.  They just singing about sheep at sporting events and read poems about mighty rivers and like the idea of saving the outback.  And so it seems every new Australia government makes saving the Murray River part of their platform. 

The previous Howard government was going to save the Murray from salinity – and achieved this through the construction of salt interception schemes and catchment wide drainage plans all administered by the Murray Darling Basin Commission.     

The new Rudd Government wants to save the Murray from climate change.   This is a much more ambitious undertaking than saving the Murray from salt.  

As part of this campaign the new government has new legislation, The Water Amendment Bill 2008, and it is currently being debated in federal parliament with its second reading beginning last week.   A centre piece of the new legislation is the creation of a ‘The Murray Darling Basin Authority’.   This new institution is claimed to be needed because the existing Murray Darling Basin Commission doesn’t have enough control over the states, but in reality the new organisation, like the old, will still be subject to state politics.  In short, nothing much will change, but it keeps the politicians in politics.   

Politician and new Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, plans to relieve the claimed climate change problem by buying up farms; most recently through the purchase of a 91,000 hectare property called Tooralee near Burke in NSW.  Tooralee currently grows maize, cotton and beef cattle but following the federal government takeover will be converted to national park.  

Internet campaigners ‘GetUp’ helped get the Rudd-government elected, and have recently joined ‘the fray’ on Murray River issues claiming to provide an opportunity for Australians “to keep the rivers flowing” and save “Australia’s food bowl” through a few mouse-clicks.   But this new campaign is particularly deceptive as Penny Wong’s policies will actually close-down agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin i.e. empty the food bowl!  Indeed the federal government has something like $3.6 billion to buyback farms like Tooralee.
Furthermore, as some farmers explained on ABC’s TV’s Four Corners program on Tuesday night, you can’t buy back rivers, not even with billions of dollars, because water allocations are just air space until it rains.   

But hey, modern Australia’s are now a mostly soft and gullible lot and likely to support this campaign which is essentially a campaign in support of more politics and big government and against bushies because they now know no better.   But none of this makes senses in the context of our heritage which was about being practical and a part of the bush – the floods and the droughts and the climate change.

Beyond Burke, May 2005. Photograph by Jennifer Marohasy

How to Save the Red Gum Forests: A Note to Mr Kelvin Thomson MP

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Kelvin Thomson is the federal member for Wills, representing inner-city northern Melbourne.   He was the Shadow Attorney-General in early 2007 when it was discovered that he had provided a notorious Melbourne gangster, Tony Mokbel, with a personal reference describing him as a “responsible, caring husband and father”.   Mr Thomson subsequently resigned from the front bench, but he still has trouble telling good from bad. 

Last Tuesday in federal parliament as part of debate on the Water Amendment Bill 2008, Mr Thomson described me as an anti-environmentalist and made much of my opposition to the creation of another 100,000 hectares of National Park along the Murray River.   He suggested that converting state forest to national park would be a very significant nature conservation outcome for the Murray River which I opposed.  

In reality converting state forest to national park is not going to address the current key issue for the forests which is provision of adequate environment flows in an efficient manner.  Furthermore, by ‘locking-up’ the forests and banning current management practices the forests may become less, rather than more, resilient.  

I do oppose the continual ‘locking-up’ of ever more forest principally on the basis that those in metropolitan Australia, in places like inner-city Melbourne, like the idea of national parks.  

Many city people have a romantic notion of wilderness – an idea that wilderness is a place where people do not go.   In reality the beauty of many wild places is a consequence of careful management by people.  Indeed the red gum forests of the central Murray Valley, the forests that Mr Thomson would like to see ‘locked-up’, are only about 6,000 years old following a geological uplifting that changed the course of the Murray River.  They have always been managed, first by indigenous Australians and more recently by the wood cutters and cattlemen who now live there. 

In July this year I launched the 152-page ‘Conservation and Community Plan’ for the Red Gum forests at the Victorian Parliament House.   This plan is about protecting the Red Gum forests not leaving their survival to fate.   The plan developed by 25 community groups under the guidance of foresters Mark Poynter and Barry Dexter proposes the creation of a public land tenure known as RAMSAR Reserve with management to integrate the principles of multiple-use with environmental care.   Current government policies and plans relating to timber production, cattle grazing, and recreational activities would be retained in RAMSAR Reserves in accordance with zoning that takes account of prevailing values and conditions.   

The community plan proposes that funding for more on-ground resources be obtained from revenue generated by these commercial uses of the forest such as timber production, grazing, firewood collection and bee keeping.   

The Alliance of community groups supports more environmental flows for the forests and the plan explains how to achieve the more efficient delivery of this water through the use of water regulators that already exist in many of the forests. 

In short, Mr Thomson misrepresents me when he suggested in federal parliament last week that I do not care about the Red Gum forests.   I care deeply about these forests and I recognise that their preservation is dependent on appropriate management regimes, not the romantic notion of wilderness implicit in the speech by Mr Thomson that falsely assumes less people equals more trees.    

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Additional Reading:

While the Murray River is flowing despite the drought, many of its tributaries are drying up: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/2007/11/murray-river-tributary-reduced-to-billabongs/ 

After a fire in the Barmah forest:    https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/2007/11/after-the-%e2%80%98top-island%e2%80%99-fire-in-the-barmah-red-gum-forest/

Some forests can be ‘drought proofed’ through thinning: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/2007/11/thinning-red-gum-forests-at-koondrook/ 

You can read my speech at the launch of the community plan here:  https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/2008/08/a-new-plan-for-the-red-gums-of-northern-victoria/

Enjoying the Murray River, surrounded by River Red gums, just upstream of Barham, October 2007.  Photograph taken by Jennifer Marohasy.