Hypocryte Brumby
Before he came to power, John Brumby had spent four years as the Minister for Regional Development and was exposed to the dreams and aspirations of us all. Since becoming the Premier of the State we have learned that he is completely city centric and the rural communities have suffered under his leadership. So, it was no surprise to read:-
John Brumby to kill Murray-Darling rescue plan
Lenore Taylor and Rick Wallace | July 03, 2008 | The AustralianJOHN Brumby has vowed to scuttle a Rudd government plan to accelerate the rescue of the Murray-Darling, dooming immediate hopes to buy extra water to save the stricken river system despite the states today agreeing to a historic federal takeover.
To my mind, the only reason the Bracks/Brumby government refused to join the national water plan was to buy time to rip off the Victorian country to secure Melbourne’s water supply before the feds got their hands on it because they knew they would not be allowed to drain the food bowl in that manner.
“At the moment there is no water, and what we need to do is sit down
and work out a comprehensive national plan which actually deals with
water savings and looks at ways it can be generated through on-farm and
irrigation upgrades,” a spokeswoman for Mr Brumby said.
He now appears to be scuttling the rescue plan to buy time to get the north-south pipeline signed off.
Greg, what rings true with me is the wording in this morning’s Australian, that the buying of emergency water (right now to excellerate the Murray’s rescue) is not achievable because there is no extra water to buy. What Victoria is saying is that there ought to be more focus on the current wastage of water by the rural sector, putting infrastructure in place to educate the rural industry and help them better look after what water we actually have to use. With my work for an organization (NSW – Victoria – Federal funded) called Water for Rivers, I can identify with solutions currently being applied at a grass roots level in rural communities.
The emphasis should be on managing what resources we have, instead of “oiling the noisiest hinge” by shifting water around to please the most demanding users.
Mind you, I suspect Brumby’s pipe-line should be labeled a pipe-dream.
JR
3 July 2008 at 11:10 am
Your experience might show things differently Jim. My experience through 15 years of Infrastructure maintenance contracting shows me that most of that wastage comes from neglect of the existing infrastructure.
One example was a closed pipeline in Gippsland that was losing more than 60% of the water input. As it was too expensive to repair, nothing was ever done. That pipe line is probably still losing that much water today – and that has nothing to do with wastage of water by the rural sector.
I also have experience of the breakup of State Rivers and Water Supply Commission and the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works and the shredding of all documentation of those organisations. In planning maintenance projects, it is most helpful to be able to access the original construction drawings – but they no longer existed.
To me, this was an absolute dereliction of government duty not to hand over asset information when it was being sold. In fact, some of those organisations didn’t know they owned the asset until it failed.
I guess I am throwing it all back to successive governments that never maintained what we had and that, if they had, today’s shortages might not have been so desperate.
Greg Naylor
3 July 2008 at 12:18 pm
obviously the Murray Darling needs to be managed as one river, and I’m certainly not about defending John Brumby, but what about mongrels like Barnaby Joyce, going in to bat for irrigators who’ve claimed around half the water in the Darling so a few greedy bastards can grow cotton?
A handful of Queensland irrigators use more water than the whole state of Victoria, meanwhile the Darling is dead (not dying, actually dead) from just below the NSW border to the confluence in Bathurst.
If it were up to me I’d send the army in to blow the Queensland dams to kingdom come.
Round the bastards using the water up and put them in a jail cell where they belong.
It’s theft, when someone takes something for themselves that rightly belongs to everyone, it’s theft.
You want to see the Murray survive and the Darling come back to life?
Put a muzzle on the Queensland red-necks that are sucking the whole river system dry.
alburywodongaonline
3 July 2008 at 10:35 pm
obviously the Murray Darling needs to be managed as one river, and I’m certainly not about defending John Brumby, but what about mongrels like Barnaby Joyce, going in to bat for irrigators who’ve claimed around half the water in the Darling so a few greedy bastards can grow cotton?
A handful of Queensland irrigators use more water than the whole state of Victoria, meanwhile the Darling is dead (not dying, actually dead) from just below the NSW border to the confluence in Bathurst.
If it were up to me I’d send the army in to blow the Queensland dams to kingdom come.
Round the bastards using the water up and put them in a jail cell where they belong.
It’s theft, when someone takes something for themselves that rightly belongs to everyone, it’s theft.
You want to see the Murray survive and the Darling come back to life?
Put a muzzle on the Queensland red-necks that are sucking the whole river system dry.
alburywodongaonline
3 July 2008 at 10:35 pm