River talks must not spring a leak. IF you are wondering what all the fuss is about the Prime Ministers plan for the Murray Darling Basin,
it comes down to the fact that basin is home to most of Australia's irrigated agriculture.
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Most importantly, irrigated agriculture is profitable agriculture.
According to the Co-operative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures, while less than one per cent of
Australia's agricultural area is irrigated, it produces 28 per cent of production and
51 per cent of total profit.
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Another important thing about irrigated agriculture is that most of it is processed in local communities:
milk becomes butter and cheese, grapes become wine, sultanas become dried fruit, and so on.
This means jobs lots of jobs in regional communities, as well as value added products.
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In other words, it is about money, jobs, export earnings, and vibrant regional communities.
These all depend on reliable river water but that reliability is now under threat.
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Drought has drastically reduced the water flowing down the Murray Darling.
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The waters are also likely to be reduced by climate change. River flows will be further reduced by
ground water use, more farm dams, forests growing after bush fires that suck up much more water
than mature forests, farm forestry, and even from more efficient irrigation systems which use the water
that used to flow back into the river.
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In addition to these future changes which will have to be managed there is a big historic problem.
The rivers of the Murray Darling basin have been over allocated.
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State governments have issued licences for too much water to be taken out of the river.
NSW is the main culprit here. For 15 years it has talked about clawing back licences. There has been
much pain as irrigators have given up water for the environment, but there is still some way to go.
This is why Iemma was the first, indeed the only, premier to sign up and he did that very quickly.
What Labor premier wouldn't prefer the Liberal Prime Minister to bear the pain they
have been unwilling to cop themselves?
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At the top end, Premier Beattie has rolled out the latest version of the Bradfield plan, and proposed
piping the waters of the northern coast, inland to the Darling system.
There are two main problems with this. The first is a plethora of environmental consequences.
The second is no farmer could afford the cost of the water, once it had been dammed, piped,
dammed and released and, after about half evaporated, it finally arrived at the farm where it would
probably be used to grow cotton.
 
At the bottom end Premier Rann worries about those cotton growers. He wants an independent board
of experts, like the Reserve Bank, to preside over the system. This has some merit, given the current
system works on a consensus of politicians from the Murray Darling basin states and
you can see where that has got them.
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Ranns state is particularly vulnerable, given half of it is supplied by the Murray River. Adelaide, which
actually lies outside the basin, gets up to 90 per cent of its water from the Murray in a drought year.
The water of the Murray is piped hundreds of kilometers, up to Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Whyalla
and as far north as Woomera.
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Premier Bracks state of Victoria currently enjoys the most secure water allocations. Along the Murray,
on the NSW side most farmers have general security licences, and this year are getting zero allocations
not one drop. Those few farmers with higher security licences are getting 48 per cent.
On the South Australian stretch of the Murray, farmers are getting 60 per cent of their allocations.
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But up on the Victorian side of the Murray, farmers are getting 95 per cent. And this is what Bracks is
determined to defend. He argues, with some justification, that Victoria has a much more conservative
approach to water. They certainly earn more out of it than NSW does, and have built a much more
densely settled rural community based on processing irrigated produce.
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There is no doubt the Murray Darling Basin needs to be run as one basin, by an authority empowered
to make some very hard decisions. The decision to do that will not be made this Friday.
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But at least the discussion has begun. We can only hope parochialism will eventually be put aside and
the interests of our greatest river system, and those who depend on it, will prevail.