Murray River

I took this picture at Deniliquin on the banks of the Edward River just this afternoon. The Edward is an anabranch of the Murray River and very much part of the Riverina.

There is a perception that most red gums in this region are dead – well that’s according to newspapers like The Age – but they are not.

They are beautiful trees.

Robert Manne has edited a new book titled ‘Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia’ that includes a chapter titled ‘Murdoch and the Culture War’ by David McKnight.

Manne’s book is due out later this week but I did get to see a copy of the McKnight chapter today.

It focuses on The Australian newspaper and its purportedly special and amicable relationship with ‘right wing’ think tanks the CIS and IPA.

The analysis suggests McKnight has spent some time doing a content and author analysis of the Opinion pages of The Australian and also what is published in the IPA Review and Quadrant magazine.

While I work for the IPA I have not had such a good run in The Australian. Aspects of my ‘relationship’ with The Australian are explained in the piece I wrote for Quadrant magazine published in December 2004
http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/author_letter_list.php?author_id=393 .

McKnight must have seen this piece. I wonder if he read it? It does not support the general thesis of his chapter.

Perhaps he saw it as an exception to the rule? But even ‘exceptions’ can provide real insights.

While I haven’t been able to find anything about the new book on the internet (yet), McKnight did publish something by a similar title a few years ago,
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Feb04/McKnight.htm .

This piece, while significantly different to the new chapter, has a similar theme and begins,

Rupert Murdoch founded The Australian in 1964 as a bold statement of his belief that this country needed a quality national daily newspaper. His action was based on a nation-building vision that he shared with the leader of the Country Party, John McEwen, who deeply influenced him at that time.

For twenty years, The Australian lost money, a strange anomaly in the life of its ruthlessly commercial owner. In a 1994 address to the free-market think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies, Murdoch mentioned these losses but argued that some things were more important than short-term profits – ideas in society. He went on to quote John Maynard Keynes’s famous lines about the significance of political and philosophical ideas to men who regarded themselves as supremely practical. In the media business, ‘we are all ruled by ideas’, Murdoch added.

The front page of The Australian on Wednesday (May 25th) included the headline: “Thirstiest crop: 21,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of rice.”

The figure was based on a “new CSIRO study, which found that of 135 industries analyzed, rice was one of the nation’s most costly – financially, socially and environmentally.”

The Rice Growers’ Association issued a media release, “If it was remotely true that it took 21,000 litres the Australian rice industry would use more water to grow a crop than currently even exists in the whole Murray-Darling system.”

(Based on the figures in The Australian, and given rice growers produce on average one million tonnes of rice a year, I calculate they would use 21,000 gigalitres of water! Unbelievable given 24,000 gigalitres is the average inflow into the entire Murray Darling system.)

Also on Wednesday, CSIRO issued a media release titled “Correction on water usage figures assigned to rice industry” that stated, “Industry sources note that the water intensity per kilogram of rice is between 1,500 and 2,000 litres per kilogram. We accept this figure.”

So how did our national newspaper get it so wrong?

According to the CSIRO media release, “in preparation of some promotional material, specifically the cover of the CD version of the Balancing Act report, an error was inadvertently made.”

But there are also problems interpreting the information in the CSIRO report.

The report states that “The water intensity of (rice) production is … 8,400 litres per dollar of final consumption.” (Interestingly this figure was revised down to 8,000 litres in the media release issued on Wednesday).

Given rice is selling at $0.31 per kg, I calculate that rice uses 2,604 litre per kilogram – based on the 8,400 litres per dollar figure.

This is far higher than the “accepted industry figure” of between 2,000 and 1,500 litres per kilogram!

The reports authors worked from the assumption that: “There is a general consensus that ‘leaving it all to market forces’ will not effectively serve the interests of our children’s children.”

Yet the report is couched in ‘dollars per unit of water’ terms, never mind how bizarre the result. Indeed because commodity prices fluctuate, the method as a comparison across the economy appears to be only valid for a particular point in time i.e. for any given year. For example, the price of rice has been dropping over the last few years – down from A$ 0.45 per kg in 1998-99 to $0.31 per kg in 2003-04. Using the CSIRO methodology and based on a water usage of 1,500 litre per tonne, when rice is selling at $0.31 then rice is using 4,838 litres per dollar of final consumption, while with rice selling at $0.45 then rice is using 3,333 litres per dollar of final consumption. And if the CSIRO accepts the industry figure of 2,000 litres per kilogram, with rice selling at $0.31, then rice is using 6,452 litres per dollar of final consumption. Crazy stuff!

Yet the report has been promoted as providing a “relatively simple presentation of highly complex issues” to enable people “who are interested in sustainability to move beyond decisions based on dollars and cents and enable them to make decisions based on a contribution to society, environment, and economy.”

No. It is more like rather a lot of game playing, and posturing, and then back-peddling when caught-out.

Interestingly journalists at our respected daily national newspaper were taken in, but then confused by the analysis. And how did they let the so very wrong 21,000 litres slip through the editorial process?

Then again it has been my experience that The Australian has been too quick, for too long, to print almost anything that is highly critical of agriculture in the Murray Darling Basin.

And brace yourself for a week of even worse, probably beginning tomorrow when Jared Diamond addresses the Sydney Writer’s Festival.

Yesterday I wrote that the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) are the big ticket/big budget environmental issues. Well the Treasurer has even made special allocations for both in this year’s budget.

There is only ever going to be so much money for the environment.

Can we have confidence that budget allocations are determined on the basis of need i.e. that the MDB and GBR are areas of greatest environmental need?

A functioning peer review process could assist prioritization by helping to ensure correct information as a basis for public policy decision making (see my yesterday’s blog-post).

To what extent is the peer reviewed literature setting the public policy agenda? To what extent is the peer reviewed literature relied upon by research leaders?

When it comes to the GBR and MDB, I will contend that research leaders increasingly rely on government reports and the non-peer reviewed literature rather than publications in reputable scientific journals to influence public policy decision making.

As an example, when John Quiggin reacted to my review paper ‘Myth and the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment’ in his much quoted 24th March 2004 blog-post he made much of a graph within a government report (rather than something peer reviewed) to suggest a Murray River salinity problem that was likely to get much worse.

I wonder whether the graph would have made it through a peer review process? It represents 40-50 years of daily salt readings stretched and smoothed over an 80 -90 year period with this trend line then merged into a projection from a computer model that as far as I can tell has never given a correct forecast. Certainly the model has been predicting in the wrong direction for the last 6 years.

I suggest the graph is a disgrace and designed simply to perpetuate the myth of a worsening salinity problem. Salinity levels are in fact significantly less than suggested by the graph and have been reducing, not increasing over the last 20 years.

But perhaps the worst all time unpublished, non-peer reviewed report that has significantly influenced public policy decision making in the MDB is The NSW River’s Survey by the CRC for Freshwater Ecology and NSW Fisheries.

The report’s principal conclusions include that “A telling indication of the condition of rivers in the Murray region was the fact that, despite intensive fishing with the most efficient types of sampling gear for a total of 220 person-days over a two-year period
in 20 randomly chosen Murray-region sites, not a single Murray cod or freshwater catfish was caught.”

Most remarkably at the same time, in the same years and regions, that the scientists were undertaking their now much-quoted survey that found no Murray cod, commercial fishermen harvested 26 tonnes of Murray cod!

Criticism of the report’s findings from a local fisherman goes something along the lines “The scientists, although having letters behind their name, spending some $2million on gear, and 2 years trying, evidently still can’t fish.”

This is some of the non-peer reviewed literature driving public policy decision making in Australia – including how our money is allocated for the environment as part of the budget process.

A student from RMIT (a Melbourne University) is doing a project on water and has asked me how environmental water is allocated.

There is no national or state-wide ledger (or website) showing how environmental water is acquired and allocated.

The following example is based on information that I have received from the NSW Murray Wetland Working Group Inc..

In the year 2000 this newly formed wetland working group was given a yearly allocation of 30,000 megalitres of water from ‘water saving’ made by Murray Irrigation Ltd..

The environmental water was to be used to save red gums, water wetlands and can also be traded.

This is how the group used their water over the first four years of their operation:

Year 2000
26,000 megs to water Barmah-Millewah Redgum forest
1,500 megs to Wanganella Swamp
2,500 megs traded

Year 2001
4,500 megs used to water Werai State Forest and
800 megs used to water wetlands on private properties
15,000 megs traded

Year 2002
3,945 megs used to water wetlands on private properties
23,000 megs traded

The 23,000 megs was traded at the height of the drought when water was selling for a premium. The 23,000 megs was sold for $3.8 million. Much of the money from this trade was apparently used to build a fish ladder.

Year 2003
7,510 megs used to water wetlands on private properties
1,600 megs used to water Gulpa Creek Reed Beds Swamp and Duck Lagoon
950 megs used to water Pollacks Swamp
550 megs used to water Thegoa Lagoon
11,910 megs traded

Totals for each year do not necessarily equal 32,000 megs as the allocation is nominal and dependent on the allocation within the Murray Valley.

When I asked the Murray Darling Basin Commission in June 2004 how much water wetland working groups have been nominally allocated overall and how this water is generally applied I was informed, “I am not able to advise you of the volume of environmental water throughout the Basin. Environmental water comes in a variety of forms including:
Minimum flows
Environmental flow rules
Contingency allowances
Tradeable entitlements.
Details of some of these entitlements can be found in the NSW water sharing plans.”

There is a lot of money potentially involved in managing environmental water. Yet it is difficult to access the most basic information.

I suggest there is a need for the type of information detailed here to be pubicly available for all wetland working groups and other managers of environmental water.

There should also be reports showing the environmental benefits of the water allocations as well as how the money from the trades is spent.

When I last contacted the Murray Wetland Working Group (September 2004) they were undertaking no monitoring work as such.