You’d think it’s an indication of the seriousness of the predicament the Murray is in when the Prime Minister flys into town to personally inspect the state of the Hume weir, you’d be right.
The CSIRO has released a report suggesting that there could be as much as 41% less water available in the Murray by 2030 than there is now.
Yes our climate is changing, but I don’t think there is any doubt whatsoever that the health of the Murray and it’s tributaries has declined steadily since the completion, and subsequent doubling in size of the mega-dam constructed by Queensland irrigators to secure massive water allocations to grow cotton.
Albury Wodonga Online 
Where do you get the pics from, Jack? Not an accurate choice at all.
Supposed to be Kevin 07, mate, not Burt Newton.
there’s a West Australian guy named Terry Dunnett who does all kinds of characatures, (he does commission ones too if your interested) this is the less moon faced one if you can believe that.
That’s a bit thought provoking Jack. So, more water is being collected upstream and more water is being used to irrigate cotton. However, that water should drain back into the system.
If not back into the Murray Darling system, it obviously goes to the sea via a different route or into the great artesian basin. The end result appears to be that it no longer reaches the Victorian border. Similarly, the Goulburn water redirected to Bendigo and Melbourne will never reach the South Australian border.
Without that water being available for evaporation and redistribution via rain, it is logical that local climate conditions in the affected areas must change. That is pretty solid evidence of man-caused climate change.
So, where is there any legitimacy in the Federal Government taking over the control of the Murray Darling system. It is all too late. Capitalism will continue to prevail over the environment.
I’m not convinced it’s too late at all Greg,
it’s critically urgent, but nature has an amazing capacity to revive itself, all it needs is to be left alone.
Go talk to anyone along the Darling river about what they think of cotton irrigators, it’s a dirty word there.
You’ll hardly find a pastoralist or a grazier up there now, the floods that used to sustain the land are finished.
The Murray is in huge trouble, but the Darling is absolutely at death’s door.
There’s no water in it until you get to the confluence at Bathurst.
It’s a direct result of irrigators in Queensland cordoning of mega litres upon mega litres from environmental flows for irrigation.
If we want to see the Murray survive another generation, those dams have to go.
Shouldn’t Cubby station be closed? The destruction of the Darling seems to starts at its headwaters from where most of the water drawn off does not find its way back to the river.
Maybe then the Murray wouldn’t have to deliver so much water downstream to the Croweaters.
Sorry Jack, I know you empathise with S.A. but it’s a God forsaken place and btw this isn’t the first time the mouth of the Murray has dried up.
Yes I agree Cubby station should be closed, by force if necessary, as for SA, well I think the point I’m making is that no one has the right to cordon off a disproportionately large allocation of water.
Environmental flows have just as much right (and arguably more since without the health of the river everyone’s stuffed) to recieve priority as do irrigation lobby groups.
If everyone put back as much as they took out of the river, (or close to it) no one would be crying foul, not along this stretch of the Murray (which is the lowest in recorded history) and not at the mouth of the Murray which is now just a sad series of puddles.
The Murray Darling basin is the most variable river system in the world, it has very dry times and peak floods, but even accounting for that, what we are seeing currently is unprecedented.
It’s a direct consequence of the unsated greed of Queensland irrigators.
Well, we’re in agreement on that part at least – Cubby station. Maybe just blow it up?
We’re doing ‘our bit’ over here btw, the Ovens supplies 15% of the M/D flow and there ain’t no dams here. The amount we draw off is almost negligible. I just hope this latest push doesn’t mean Bright misses out on its promised
dam>“off-river storage facility”, which would hardly upset the river’s flow but would just mean that we could avoid drawing heavily from the Ovens in summer. It’s due by 2011.The Upper Ovens Valley is a growth area (well it won’t be if Save Bright’s Cittaslow idea gets up) and secure water supply is a key to sustaining that.
There isn’t a water allocation along the entire length of the Murray Darling which even comes close to that which the Queensland irrigators draw out.
Ten towns the size of Bright could have an olympic sized swimming pool in each of their back yards and still not use as much water as those red-necks.
All under the protection of Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, champion of the Queensland irrigators, “the man who killed the Murray”.
I’d like to stick a knife in that bastard’s heart if I had the chance, I’d probably have to have a couple of digs though, the thing’d only be about the size of a pea.
This post started out about Kevin Rudd visiting the dam – what was the outcome of that … and the CSIRO released a report that appears to have not been made public … sounds like a worthless PR exercise to me
I don’t know Greg, he didn’t speak to any media outlets, make any public appearences or anything like that, if it WAS a PR excercise, it wasn’t very well planned.
I suspect we won’t know what the outcome of the visit was for a while yet, even so, you have to give him points for actually getting off his bum and coming down here to have a look, it’s more than little Johnny ever did.