Fair Water Use Australia | striving for a revived Murray-Darling basin by supporting environmentally sustainable water-use

Home

Op-Ed Articles

Submissions welcome

Fair Water Use invites supporters to submit articles on the Murray-Darling crisis and related topics. All submissions will be reviewed and may be posted to this page subsequently. Articles should be sent to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

It must be emphasised that opinions stated in published essays do not necessarily reflect those of Fair Water Use.

I.H. Douglas: Desperately seeking: Missing Murray inflows*

* Published by ABC News On-line: January 2010

7th January 2010

Recent heavy rains in Eastern Australia have provided an abundance of photo opportunities for national and overseas media: large areas of the northern Murray-Darling Basin submerged by floodwaters; the ongoing inundations cutting-off several towns and countless farming properties.

Information provided by the Bureau of Meteorology indicates that widespread heavy rainfall in northern NSW and Queensland has resulted in gaugings of between 100 and 200mm for December 2009 in much of the northern Basin.

In addition to these well above average December falls, the highest on record in some parts, the first days of the New Year have seen many areas in the Darling catchment receive precipitation well over 100mm - and the rain is still falling.

J E Caldecott: South Australia's Water and Environmental Disaster

5th November 2009

The Lower Lakes have been a natural part of the River Murray for thousands of years. Evaporation from these Lakes is part of the natural water cycle. Water is not a resource or commodity, but a natural resource to be nurtured and respected. The water cycle is too complex for the market to manage as it is primarily motivated by profit. The continuing construction of blocking dams, weirs and regulators is destroying our environmental inheritance, the public amenity and utility of our water ways. It is time, once and for all, we stood together to demand a fair share of the River Murray for South Australia under all climate scenarios. We don't need increased obstruction to natural flows; we need better management and prioritisation of the entire Murray-Darling Basin (MDB).

I H Douglas: Toolkit for Basin repair*

* Published by ABC News On-line: November 2009

4th November 2009

Rice producers are gearing up to plant a crop this year, following the announcement by the NSW Government of a further increase in water allocations. The Rice Growers Association is predicting a harvest of around 200,000 tonnes.

Analysis of 2005-2006 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics indicate that the value of the 2009-2010 crop will be around 55 million dollars in 2006 terms, or 0.37% of the gross value of agricultural production of the Murray Darling Basin (15 billion dollars in 2005-2006), representing approximately 0.03% of the likely global rice harvest in 2009-2010.

K. Tranter: There’s a hole in the bucket! *

* Published by ABC News On-line: October 2009

9th October 2009

Sorry to interrupt the high five sessions on our world-beating economic performance, but aren’t we forgetting something? Ask an economist and they’ll say no; ask a realist and they’ll tell you that we’ve forgotten that water underpins everything.

How much food can our farmers produce without water? How many ASX listed companies currently are significantly overvalued because of their reliance on the availability of cheap water to generate current profits?

More...