Robert Ennever | Bendemere Books

DO POLITICIANS REALLY HAVE A ‘PLAN’?

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Published on Friday, 25 July 2014 11:06

DO POLITICIANS REALLY HAVE A ‘PLAN’  FOR THE MURRAY-DARLING OR ONLY A ‘COMPROMISE’?  Shouldn’t we as a nation be seeking a SOLUTION for the problem rather than a Band-Aid patch-up which satisfies no-one?

      In the current dispute both parties’ arguments have considerable merit. Irrigators need water, communities along the rivers need water, farmers and pastoralists need water, and undeniably the ecosystems and environment need water. The one common factor in the problem is insufficient water to meet everyone’s requirements.

     However, this apology for a ‘Plan’ makes no attempt to remedy this shortage. Its only suggestion is how to ration and apportion an already inadequate supply. Should it not be addressing ‘How do we increase the amount and regularity of water in the system?’

     Australia is a continent plagued by the twin scourges of floods and droughts. We can do nothing about preventing either of these.  But we can do something about making more water available for the Murray Darling Basin!

     Northern Australia experiences a high and reliable rainfall. For a nation which could build the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the Ord River Scheme, the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and other such schemes, surely it is not beyond our abilities to harness this abundant water source and feed it by means of dams and pipelines into the headwaters of the Murray Darling System.

     In the past our politicians made much of the need for Australia to decentralize. But as is so often the case with those who profess to govern for the well-being of our country, talk seldom translates into action.  The greatest impediment to the development and utilization of the vast tracts of fertile land in inland Australia is the scarcity and unreliability of water.  Provide this and not only our rural industries but also the communities which serve them would flourish.

     Those who would argue against this proposal carp negatively about the cost of pumping water, ignoring the enormous cost of NOT pumping water. They overlook the fact that more than a century ago Australians were able to pump water five hundred and thirty kilometres from Perth to Kalgoorlie and that this inland city of more than one hundred thousand inhabitants continues to the present day to source its water supply through this pipeline.

      Here in our country we enjoy more hours of sunshine than most other countries on the planet. Why can’t we have solar powered pumping stations spaced at intervals along the pipeline? What is the cost per litre of water produced through desalination as compared with the cost of accessing water freely provided by northern rainfall? And, talking cost, if we can afford in excess of forty billion dollars for a National Broadband which might well be obsolete before it is completed, can we NOT afford to address one our most fundamental needs, WATER?

 Robert Ennever                                            25^th July, 2014