Category Archives: Murray-Darling Basin

New Murray-Darling Basin Authority boss fails to mention environment in all-staff memo

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Staff raise concerns after incoming chief executive Andrew McConville emphasises agricultural outcomes in introductory letter

The new chief executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Andrew McConville, has caused consternation after sending an all-staff memo outlining his approach to the job which failed to mention the regulator’s environmental role.

A former chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Producers & Exporters Association (APPEA), McConville was appointed to the top job at the MDBA by the Morrison government just days before the federal election was called.

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After the deluge: Australia’s outback springs to life as mighty rivers flow again

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Two months after rains fell in the north, billions of litres of water are finally coursing down the Baaka-Darling system, rejuvenating the Menindee Lakes and farming communities

In late March parts of Queensland were deluged by rain. Cars were swept from roads and flash floods inundated towns as rivers broke their banks.

Billions of litres of water flowed across flood plains into creeks and from creeks into the rivers that stretch like fingers across the region.

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‘It’s a funeral march’: French artist JR’s powerful eulogy for Australia’s Murray-Darling

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Exclusive: The street artist’s latest work saw 60 people parade through Lake Cawndilla in NSW, holding aloft enormous portraits of local farmers and leaders as they fight to save Australia’s vital river system

The mood around Lake Cawndilla in western New South Wales on Saturday is funereal but defiant, as a procession of around 60 locals parade through scrub and sand around its banks.

They carry between them a series of 30m-long cloth figures: three local citrus farmers and prominent Baakandji artist William Badger Bates.

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Productivity Commission says new Australian water deal must recognise climate change

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Federal and state governments are being urged to respond to the effects of the climate crisis and to Indigenous rights to water

States and the federal government should forge a new compact on water policy that explicitly recognises climate change, and which sets “triggers” for rapid policy responses, the Productivity Commission has said.

Releasing its draft report on national water reform, the commission has called for a substantial overhaul of the 17-year-old National Water Initiative, a bedrock document that commits the states and federal government to working together on water policy as well as outlining a work program for the future.

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Plans for the plains: the fight over harvesting floodwater in NSW is about to get real

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The state is on the cusp of granting $2bn or more in licences, but has no way of measuring how much water will be returned to parched river systems

In the next week or two, the NSW government will reveal how many floodplain harvesting licences it intends to grant in the Gwydir valley, home to some of the biggest cotton producers in the country.

It’s the next chapter in a process that will grant between $2bn and $4bn in water entitlements to farmers as part of a plan to control and regularise a practice that captures billions of litres of water for irrigation during high-rainfall events.

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Former NSW water minister defends exclusion of driest years from sustainable water calculations

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New water-sharing plans use data that ends at 2004 to calculate extractions from major tributaries in the Murray-Darling system

The former NSW water minister Kevin Humphries has defended controversial legislation that effectively excludes some of the driest water years from figures used to calculate sustainable water allocations for irrigators, towns and the environment.

Humphries, who confirmed he had been referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption over unspecified decisions he took as water minister, told a NSW parliamentary committee that the 2014 legislation he introduced was to give greater certainty to all water users.

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Federal government withholds water funding from NSW in Murray-Darling standoff

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Minister disappointed that New South Wales did not submit Murray-Darling basin resource plans

The federal government is withholding millions of dollars from the New South Wales government for failing to complete water resource plans for the Murray-Darling basin.

In a letter to the state’s water minister, Melinda Pavey, the federal water resources minister, David Littleproud, raised concerns the 20 plans had not been submitted.

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Water wars: will politics destroy the Murray-Darling Basin plan – and the river system itself?

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Drought is not the only threat to the river system: the plan to save it is in doubt as states spar over the best way forward

The millennium drought led to the realisation Australia’s major river system would die unless there was united action to save it; the latest drought is threatening to undo the Murray-Darling Basin plan.

The basin states – Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia – as well as the federal government, are due to meet on Tuesday in Brisbane amid threats from the NSW Nationals that it will walk away from the plan unless major changes are made.

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Chaos in parliament over Coalition’s union-busting bill – politics live

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Scott Morrison announces cut in number of government departments as part of public service overhaul. All the day’s political news, live

Labor is moving a motion saying the government’s attempts to push the union-busting bill through without debate was “anti-democratic”.

Better still is this bit of the motion:

This is a prime ministerial tantrum, with the prime minister of Australia behaving like a juvenile schoolyard bully just because he didn’t get his way last week.

We’re now moving through the votes for the government’s union-busting bill.

A side note - this is the 100th division to take place in the House for this sitting fortnight.

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Police ask Clover Moore for statement on Angus Taylor – politics live

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Sydney lord mayor approached by police investigating accusations the emissions reduction minister relied on a falsified document to attack her. Follow all the day’s political news live

That’s where we’ll leave the live blog for the day. Thanks for following along.

It’s been another messy day. Many say the medevac repeal has made it one of parliament’s darkest.

Another development on the Angus Taylor front.

The City of Sydney’s lord mayor, Clover Moore, has been approached by police to provide a statement for their investigation into accusations Taylor relied on a falsified document to attack her travel-related emissions. The council said in a statement:

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‘I don’t know how we come back from this’: Australia’s big dry sucks life from once-proud towns

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Guardian Australia reports from three communities hard hit by one of the worst droughts in living memory

Australia is experiencing one of its most severe droughts on record, resulting in desperate water shortages across large parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland. Dams in some parts of western NSW have all but dried up, with rainfall levels through the winter in the lowest 10% of historical records in some areas.

The crisis in the far west of the state became unavoidable after the mass fish kills along the lower Darling River last summer, but now much bigger towns closer to the coast, including Dubbo, are also running out of water.

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Australia launches emergency relocation of fish as largest river system faces collapse

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There are doubts the Noah’s Ark plan for the Lower Darling will be enough to prevent more mass fish kills

Faced with a looming ferocious summer with little rain forecast, the New South Wales government has embarked on a Noah’s Ark type operation to move native fish from the Lower Darling – part of Australia’s most significant river system – to safe havens before high temperatures return to the already stressed river basin.

Researchers have warned of other alarming ecological signs that the Lower Darling River – part of the giant Murray-Darling Basin – is in a dire state, following last summer’s mass fish kills.

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Big irrigators take 86% of water from Barwon-Darling, report finds

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Lower Darling pushed into drought three years early because of sheer volume of water extraction by just a few licence holders

A handful of big irrigators are responsible for 86% of water extracted from the Barwon-Darling river system, pushing the lower Darling into drought three years early, an expert report has found.

The NSW Natural Resources Commission released the report by the Australian Rivers Institute professor Fran Sheldon on Monday night, after it received criticism for the claim that extraction of water by cotton growers had pushed the river system into hydrological drought three years early.

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‘Do what it takes’: Nationals leader defends preference deals with One Nation

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Michael McCormack raises eyebrows saying his party is ‘aligned with One Nation’ more than Labor or Greens

The Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, has unveiled a new statutory authority for water infrastructure in an effort to contain a bush boilover at the election – and has declared his party is happy to enter preference deals with One Nation because their policies align.

McCormack used a speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday to unveil a new Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility-style body for dams, with the new body charged with using “the best available science” to examine how large-scale water diversion projects could be established to deliver reliable and cost-effective water to farmers and regional communities.

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Barnaby Joyce dodges questions about who profited from water buyback in combative interview

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Former agriculture minister says he has ‘no problems whatsoever’ with unredacted documents about transaction being released

Barnaby Joyce has attempted to pin blame for a controversial $80m water buyback on the Queensland Labor government in a belligerent marathon interview.

Speaking to Radio National’s Patricia Karvelas on Monday evening, Joyce brushed off threats of a royal commission into the issue, arguing it would have to examine the previous federal Labor government and the state government, for recommending water buybacks from Eastern Australia Agriculture (EAA).

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Coalition faces calls for inquiry into Murray-Darling deals signed by Barnaby Joyce

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Sarah Hanson-Young demands a royal commission as Bill Shorten urges prime minister to produce all documents

The Coalition is facing calls for an inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin plan water contracts signed off by the former agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce.

As the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young called for a royal commission on Saturday, Bill Shorten also weighed in, saying there were now “question marks about the probity” of the “nation’s biggest water purchase”.

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Michaelia Cash demands apology after Senate grilling – politics live

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Senate estimates continue, with three senior ministers in Labor’s spotlight. All the days events, live

Ugh. Now that I have wrestled with tech demons, I can tell you that as expected, the motion to suspend standing orders goes down, 69 to 74.

The division is called – to see if Labor can suspend standing orders.

It does not look like the Nationals will be backing it.

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Murray-Darling Basin’s outlook is grim unless it rains, authority’s report warns

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Focus for year ahead will be on ‘providing drought refuges and avoiding irreversible loss of species’

The outlook for the environment in the Murray-Darling Basin, particularly in the north, is extremely challenging and there will be almost no scope for environmental flows for the remainder of the 2018-19 year unless it rains, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has warned.

It says the focus will be “on providing drought refuges and avoiding irreversible loss of species”.

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Murray Darling Basin Plan breaches Water Act, royal commission to find

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Commissioner to find $13bn plan to restore river took into account factors other than the environment’s needs when it set the amount of water needed to be bought back from irrigators

The Murray Darling Basin Plan is likely in breach of the commonwealth act that underpins it – the Water Act 2007, the South Australian royal commission into the plan is expected to find.

The report of the royal commission into the Murray Darling Basin Plan is being handed to the state governor on Tuesday but it is up to the SA government when it is released.

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Water crisis: western NSW mayors travel to Sydney to demand help

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Five mayors warn their towns could run out of water within weeks and call for their needs to be prioritised over irrigators

The mayors of several western New South Wales councils have warned their townships face major water crises within weeks and have urged the state government to impose a one-month embargo on irrigators pumping from the upper part of the Darling River system.

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