29 August, 2012

"The Land" Extract 16th August,2012


‘Toorale’ sale reflects Basin flop

17 Aug, 2012 12:21 PM
WHEN David Boyd flies over Toorale Station now it nearly brings him to tears.The former chairman and chief executive officer of Clyde Agriculture – which sold “Toorale” to the Commonwealth and NSW governments for $23.75 million in September 2008 – cannot believe the 91,383-hectare property is lying unused.
Mr Boyd believed the purchase of Toorale Station in 2008 – which he said had a huge negative economic impact on the community of Bourke, for minimal environmental gain – was representative of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Last week the Murray-Darling Basin Authority released its final amendments to the Basin Plan, which the Murray-Darling Ministerial Council will now analyse before reporting back to federal Water Minister Tony Burke by August 27.
“The ‘Toorale’ debacle, as I like to call it, is a microcosm of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan ... by that I mean big economic disadvantage, socio-economic damage and bugger all environmental benefit,” he said.
Mr Boyd retired as an executive of Clyde Agriculture in December 2007 but remained on the board as a non-executive director for a number of years.
He wants to see Toorale Station – which is now broken into a 54,385ha State Conservation Area and the 30,866ha Toorale National Park – returned to full agricultural production.
The huge western floodplain on the property is currently lying full of feed thanks to man-made storages along the Warrego River, which have driven successive years of flooding onto the delta.
“If you stock responsibly, if you look after the assets generally, including control of feral animals, control of weeds, then I don’t see any conflict between protection of environmental values and commercial results,” Mr Boyd said.
“If we care about people, if we care about communities, then we want economic activity.
“We’ve got a moral responsibility to sustainably maximise production.”
Mr Boyd said he was infuriated by the fact “Toorale” was not being used for agricultural production.
The Commonwealth commissioned engineering consultants Aurecon to investigate how much it would cost to decommission the six dams along the Warrego River, which found it would cost $79 million to fully decommission Toorale Station.
But Mr Boyd said taking out the dams along the Warrego River – built by Sir Samuel McCaughey in the late 19th century to drive water onto the western floodplain for grazing – would be pointless.
He said the dams merely accentuated what naturally occurred during large floods anyway and believed that by simply opening the regulation pipes installed at the bed of the river in each of the dams down the Warrego, natural conditions would be replicated.
“The Commonwealth government ... (was) obviously feeling the pressure because people were saying ‘where is all this water you were supposed to get’, which they were never going to get anyway,” he said.
“The consultant said it would cost ($79m) to remove the banks and the pipes ... I say for what purpose? What are you going to achieve? If you’ve got the gates open I think you’ve replicated natural conditions anyway.”
Mr Boyd said the 2000ha irrigation area only drew water from the natural water storage, Ross’s Billabong, which Clyde Agriculture filled each year using high-flow water licences on the Darling River, or if it filled naturally when the Darling and Warrego rivers overflowed.
While the Commonwealth government has said it believed the decommissioning of Toorale Station would return about 20,000 megalitres of water to the environment in an average year, Mr Boyd said Ross’s Billabong only held about 10,000ML.
“The other dams (along the Warrego River) are shallow, dry up very quickly and collectively don’t actually hold a lot of water,” he said.
Susie Dunn – who along with her husband Dudley purchased Toorale Station in the early 1970s and transformed it into the property it is today – said the debate about the Warrego River was peripheral and that the water had been delivered back to the Murray-Darling Basin.
When the Dunns – who went on to found Clyde Agriculture with the UK-based Swire Group – purchased“Toorale”, Mrs Dunn said it was “a shell up for surrender”.
Mrs Dunn and her husband helped pioneer the cotton industry at Bourke, building the irrigation area on Toorale Station and also flying to the United States of America to purchase a cotton gin.
The Bourke Shire Council has lamented the loss of the productive capacity of Toorale, which contributed about four per cent of the rates each year and about 10pc of the local GDP.
“We bought it with the hope of putting back a viable property and in fact that’s what we did,” Mrs Dunn said.
She said given that all irrigation water previously used to grow cotton on “Toorale” (from the Darling River) was now returned to the environment, and the Warrego storages had not supplied water for cotton, it would be a “tragedy” to demolish them.
“The Warrego really had nothing to do with it. There are high-flow pumps on the Darling River and that was the water used for cotton.”





  • Read David Boyd's comment piece on what's wrong with the Basin Plan here.
  • The Warrego River floodplain at Toorale.
  • 15 August, 2012

    Murray Darling Basin Plan-Overview 15.08.12

    The Mayor of Hay recently described the Murray Darling Basin Plan as "a solution looking for a problem", that is a great summary,in brief.

    In somewhat more detail, following is my personal submission to the Murray Darling Basin Authority in April,2012.

    Submission to the Murray Darling Basin Authority.


    Preamble
    The debate over the last year or so on the Draft Plan and its predecessor has revealed glaring flaws in both the Water Act (2007) and the Draft Plan.

    So much so that if we are serious in securing better natural resource management in Australia we need to go back to the drawing board and repeal the Act.

    I remain greatly concerned that as a consequence of misguided action by Government we will cause great socio-economic damage, unnecessarily limit future production, and do little or nothing for the environment.

    I make these comments from the perspective of somebody who has followed the Basin debate closely, and has had long experience in water management particularly in my past role as Chairman and Chief Executive of Clyde Agriculture which was not only an irrigator but had extensive floodplain grazing and dryland farming operations.

    Base Position
    The Millennium Drought had a major impact on the Basin. (The renowned recuperative power of the Australian landscape has been demonstrated in its spectacular recovery since the drought broke.)

    Water extractions were well controlled by the adaptive management approach embodied in the allocation process, guided by the Water Sharing Plans.

    Natural impacts from extreme drought are being incorrectly labelled as chronic ill-health.

    At the top of the Murray and Murrumbidgee the Snowy Scheme is not being managed in a manner which optimises its original water conservation objectives.

    At the bottom, the Murray River has been deprived of its estuary by The Barrages and this has created serious environmental problems, and the call for ever more fresh water. The diversion of fresh water flows in the South-East of S.A. to the sea, flows which once drained to the Southern Lagoon of The Coorong, has also caused environmental problems.

    Asking the CSIRO to come up with single figure Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDL's) for the rivers within the Basin reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of our inland rivers and their massive variability. To argue that these numbers are "averages" doesn't help, given the enormous spreads around the averages. In using absolute numbers as the MDBA has done, to prescribe acceptable extractions/diversions limits without relating these to actual flows (availability), is really nonsense.

    One has to wonder whether we are proposing to "throw the baby out with the bathwater' in moving to a centralised Commonwealth water management regime.

    Our current water bureaucrats could do worse than study how the existing control system operates. It works rather well.

    Drought Induced Perceptions
    In 1990 I toured China, Vietnam and Laos with a delegation from the NSW Department of Water Resources. The delegation included the State Minister, the Departmental Head and the Chairman of the MDBC. One of our objectives was to explain to our hosts how different jurisdictions could successfully manage a river-in their case the Mekong. The successful model was the MDBC which at the time was held in the highest esteem. How perceptions have changed!

    More Conservation
    If we had more dams, in the big wet events, we could store very substantial additional amounts of water, yet they would represent only a tiny percentage of the big flows.

    Toorale Station Lesson
    The Government purchase of Bourke’s most productive property, Toorale Station in 2008 is a microcosm of the Basin Plan. If Toorale had continued to operate it would have reduced river flows in the Darling River past Louth in 2010/11 by 0.01%!

    In other words, great social cost, for no environmental benefit.

    2012 Outlook Conference
    This MDB session at the recent Agricultural Outlook Conference disturbed me for a number of reasons-

    The opening graph showed no impact from the allocation system which dramatically reduced extractions during the recent drought.

    There was a broadbrush comment that MDB extractions were usually "around 10 to 11,000 GLS."

    There were many comments such as "recovering water" and "closing the gap" without it would seem an understanding that Government buying entitlements is simply changing ownership from the private sector to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH).

    Recognising the Difference Between ‘Entitlements’ and ‘Allocations’
    According to the ABS, during the most recent years of the drought the allocation system guided by the very effective water sharing plans for each of the Basin's rivers reduced extractions to-

    (GL'S)

    2005-06   7369

    2006-07   4458

    2007-08   3141

    2008-09   3492

    2009-10   3564

    not around "10 to 11,000 GLS" as quoted at the Outlook Conference.

    Water entitlements without allocations amount to 'phantom water'. An 'entitlement' only grants the holder a share of 'allocations' when there are any. The entitlements held by the CEWH will apparently still attract allocations (when water is available) and nobody really knows what this new player (the Government) is likely to do with them.

    So, we have a situation whereby before allocations are granted the water sharing plans call for a priority to 'critical human needs' and assessed ‘environmental needs’. Once these are met then allocations for 'consumptive' use are made. So, in what is proposed the CEWH gets a second bite, presumably mainly for environmental needs and becomes a player in the water market. This gives rise to some interesting conflicts of interest.

    It seems to me that if the assessed environmental needs are not covered adequately under the water sharing plans, which I doubt, then it is those plans that should be changed. Not have the "dog's breakfast" that is now proposed.

    Summary
    I contend that the fact remains that we have confused the natural impact of a very severe drought with "ill-health" and invalidly blamed it on extractions. A situation which has been wonderfully and dramatically corrected in the time honoured manner by the flood flows of the last three years.

    We should repeal the Water Act and begin the process anew along lines proposed by a former NSW Director General of Water Resources who has had extensive global experience in river management.

    I have serious doubts of the wisdom in centralising control in Canberra. The former MDBC/Ministerial Council approach with all the tensions and debates between the States that water management inevitably involves, was once held up around the world as an example of how to do water management properly

    I can do little better than conclude with the words of Harvard Professor John Briscoe-

    "My conclusion is stark. I believe that the Water Act of 2007 was founded on a political deception and that the original sin is responsible for most of the detour on which Australian water management now finds itself. I am well aware that unpredictability is an enemy and that there are large environmental, social and economic costs of uncertainty. But I also believe that Australian cannot find its way in water management if this Act is the guide. I would urge the Government to start again, to re-define principles, to engage all who have a stake in this vital issue, and to produce, as rapidly as possible, a new Act which can serve Australia for generations to come. And which can put Australia back in a world leadership position in modern water management."

    J.D.O.Boyd
    10.04.12







    07 August, 2012

    Murray Darling Basin Plan 06.08.12

    How good is this! Written by a knowledgeable, eloquent friend.

    EDITORIAL 07.08. 12
    The Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s Proposed Basin Plan, released this week, represents a potential communication catastrophe.  In terms of presentation, it is disastrous, bordering on incomprehensible.

    It lacks the fundamentals of acceptable information transmission: it has no start, no middle and no ending.  Importantly, it lacks an essential executive summary. The way it is written makes it almost incapable of being condensed, easily absorbed or understood.

    It blindly adheres to principles that cannot, or will be extremely difficult, to manage and implement over the various time and evaluation periods specified. In fairness, however, it is probably the fault of the Water Act and political naivety that have created the fundamental flaws on which the Proposed Plan is based.

    As outlined in the Plan, around 94% of available rainfall evaporates or transpires through plants. Less than 6% of rainfall runs off into rivers and streams of the Basin.

    Climatic conditions vary considerably from region to region and year to year. Rainfall is summer-dominant in the north and winter-dominant in the south. Variation in annual inflow to its rivers over the past 114 years have ranged from a high of around 117,907 GL in 1956 to a low of around 6,740 GL in 2006.

    Despite this background, the Plan aims to “protect and restore” the significant social, economic and environmental assets and infrastructure developed over the past century or so, basically by manipulating the wildly variable, often destabilising elements of nature, climate and human endeavour.

    A Basin producing an estimated $15 billion annually (40% of Australia’s agricultural production), comprising about 60,000 rural businesses (18,000 of them irrigating crops) and providing water for more than 3.3 million people, deserves a better fate than this 254-page quagmire of legal and bureaucratic jargon, repetitiveness and verbosity.

    02 August, 2012

    The Bush Brothers

    The linked article, beautifully written by my good friend Peter Austin, has stimulated me to record my personal association with the Brotherhood of the Good Shepherd. Whilst I am familiar with the Marra and have driven past the Church many times, I was not aware of its connection with the Brotherhood nor was I aware of my old Dalgety client and friend Jim Marr's association with the Church.

    Since my days at Nyngan in the mid-1960's-it was our first marital home-I have loved the Marra country which I have always regarded as some of the best sheep grazing country in Australia. I tried unsuccessfully, to get a scale holding there for Clyde. We had a flirtation with "Womboin" and purchased "Merrimba" and "Oxley" north of Warren, but as good as they are, they are not "Marra Creek country".

    When in 1960 as a 19 year old Dalgety sent me to Bourke Office, I continued with my attention to spiritual matters by worshipping at The Holy Innocents Anglican Church. I had been well grounded in such things at Canberra Grammar School which like the Bathurst Diocese was of the "High Church" variety, so well described in Peter's article. Bourke was in the hands of the Brotherhood of the Good Shepherd and the Priest-in-charge was a truly delightful man in the person of Brother Timothy-The Reverend Dr.Barry Marshall. After Second World War service in the RAAF, Bro Timothy studied for the Ministry at Melbourne University (Trinity College), St. John's College Morpeth and Oxford University. He went to Bourke in 1956 where he was greatly loved and returned to Trinity College , Melbourne as Chaplain in 1961.

     It was at his Church farewell in Bouke in early 1961, that I met a vibrant young school leaver, one Gail Dugan, the daughter of one of the local Church's true stalwarts-Nellie Dugan. Mrs Dugan approved of me, because I went to church and this enhanced my clumsy advances towards her young daughter. To make a long story short, nearly six years later (1966) Gail became my wife; now of 46 years standing.Gail and her mother had great affection for Bro Timothy and Gail recalls him helping her prepare for debates at Bourke Intermediate High School before she went away to Marsden Girl's School at Bathurst for her final two years of secondary schooling. Whilst at Bourke he had a very serious car accident and for some time his life was threatened. However, he appeared to make a good recovery.

    At Melbourne University Bro Timothy came in contact with my sister Helen, then a post-graduate chemistry student at Melbourne University. He officiated at her wedding in Trinity Chapel in 1962. I gave her away and Gail, who by then had commenced her nursing studies at Royal North Shore Hospital, came down to Melbourne from Sydney to attend the wedding with me.

    When Gail and I were married in 1966 Bro Timothy officiated at our Sydney wedding at the Mowbray Memorial Chapel, Chatswood and was the Master of Ceremonies at the reception.

    In 1969 Bro Timothy was appointed Principal of Pusey House, Oxford. (UK). We visited him there in early 1970. Later that year he fell from a chair whilst changing a light bulb, suffered severe brain damage and died. A terrible loss of a truly delightful man in the prime of his life.

    Pusey (1800/1882)  was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement which established what has become the High Church (Anglo-Catholic if you like) faction of the Anglican Church. Thus it was appropriate that a brilliant person of Bro Timothy's ecclesiastical persuasion, should become Principal of the House at Oxford which bears his name.

    On a lighter note, Jim Marr who features in the linked article, in 1965 told me a  humorous story about former Australian Governor General and famous soldier, Field Marshall Sir William Slim. Slim made an official visit to Canberra Grammar School when I was in my last year there and spoke to the senior boys. I have never been in the company of a man with such tremendous presence. You could literally have heard a pin drop whilst he was speaking to us. As he left the School Library where his talk took place, he tapped the clerical collar of the Headmaster Canon (later Bishop) Garnsey and apologised for preaching us a sermon and suggested he should have been wearing one of those collars. (David Garnsey was a friend of Bro Timothy's and a fellow High Churchman).

    But back to Jim Marr's, Slim story. According to Jim's information Slim had a most elaborate tattoo on his body, in the form of a full fox hunt! The horsemen coming up his chest, the hounds going over his shoulder and down his back and the fox disappearing into the obvious orifice! An English cousin of mine who was also a very senior British Army officer and knew Slim well, assured me that it isn't true.

    My other favourite Slim story, which I think Jim Marr also told me and I am assured is true, is that one hot summer's day Slim's entourage was travelling out of Canberra somewhere and Slim in full military uniform suggested they stop at the pub they were passing and have a drink. As they entered the bar one of the locals, who had been there for some time, looked up at the the newcomers, saw this apparition in its shiny bright uniform coming through the door and exclaimed loudly "Jesus Christ"! With which Slim replied "No, Slim, Governor General".