Adelaide and the Lower Lakes share a common problem, and as do all South Australians who rely on the Murray for their water, a fair share of water from the MDB. Too much is being wasted and used for inappropriate irrigation and much of it is used for exports. It is time domestic needs were put first.

In the late 1800's the Lower Lakes never dried up, yet despite 64 major dams and 600,000 private dams that have increased the average diversion capability of the MDB from 1,000 GL per year to around 11,500 GL. The current drought according to CSIRO is a once in a 300 year event in some areas of the MDB. However, when you dig into the official records you find the current regulated system is still capable of diverting around 5,500 GL per year - 10 years into a protracted drought; these are in fact record figures for a drought over the 111 years of records of the MDB.

On average total urban and industry use of the MDB is only 5% on average and for Adelaide a meagre 1%. Why is Adelaide being weaned off the Murray, as it clearly won't save the River Murray but the mass protest of a large number of South Australian residents might? There is no logic in what the Government is doing unless you are a free market fundamentalist and it is development at any cost, to hell with the environment and as for the public they will now have to pay.

Water Market Report

Personally I believe all decisions being made by governments over the last ten to fifteen years have been about creating the National Water Market. All water of economic value is being privatised to create a two tier system, private vs. public. Right at this moment the Rann Government is privatising water not by a vote of parliament or a referendum of the people but by the signature of the Minister. As provided for under the NRM Act of 2004 when NRM Water Allocation Plans allow water trading for prescribed water, once these Plans are approved by the Minister they become law! This process involves gifting tradeable water rights to those who hold a license irrespective of whether it is surface or ground water. This will create a two tier public vs. private water system in South Australia. There is something badly wrong with South Australia's democracy if our parliamentry system allows politicians to privatise the most precious of resources - water without the direct authority of a referendum.

In times gone by, irrigators would never have been able to use unviable allocations in times of drought; these unused allocations would have helped to keep the Murray flowing to the mouth and alive. We now have a system which is designed to squeeze every last drop of an allocation for consumptive use, and this doesn't count the losses from environmental flows required to be sacrificed just to get the water to its customer or to hold it in storage for next year's season use. The average losses in irrigation districts relying on gravity systems to move water to the farm gate in NSW and Victoria are huge. Losses in the Goulburn Irrigation district alone amount to an average of 900 GL per year, far more than South Australian's meagre entitlement for diversion.

CSIRO Sustainability Yields Project

CSIRO's climate modelling is based on using 49 international climate change models to guess the likely outcome by 2030; they discarded the best and worst of the models to get to 47. So when they talk about the median climate they are talking about the climate warming prediction by the middle climate model. You can not attach a probability or likelihood to the prediction! As you can see from the CSIRO reports, developed in full consultation with South Australian government agencies and I quote from their stakeholder presentation on the Murray region released in July of 2008:

-    "Adelaide and SA rural town water supply would be unaffected under this or any 2030 climate scenario",

-    "The modelling indicates that levels in the Lower Lakes would not fall below mean sea level under any 2030 climate scenario, although minimal lake areas would be lower than under the historical climate in very dry years"

Conclusion

These results indicate gross incompetence on the part of all federal and state politicians who support the building of weirs in the Lower Murray and the building of a desalination plant at Port Stanvac. This is one of the reasons I personally advocate a Royal Commission as current water management in South Australia is scandalous and there are many questions that need to be answered. Real solutions need to be developed to address the root causes and recommendations that a public commission of inquiry would uncover. For the remainder of the drought the MDB needs an Inter-State of Emergency to be declared to manage the water resources together with an Inter-State Royal Commission. Draft terms of reference for these latter two commissions have been published on Fair Water Use (Australia) web site.

Governments have been obsessed with privatising water by stealth to create a national water market of all economic water resources in South Australia irrespective of the consequences. All radical economic reforms need a crisis to provide cover and to stage big events to distract the population. That crisis has been created with the help of a once in 300 year drought in the MDB and the South Australian government is famous for its big events and celebrities.

There are many questions a South Australian Royal Commission into water management needs to answer, such as has this government made decisions that have been designed to facilitate the creation of a national water market ahead of sustaining freshwater, marine and urban environments, and traditional irrigators who have been the backbone of the irrigation industry in SA. Why has the government ignored the potential to harvest stormwater across Adelaide and to pipe Adelaide's waste water North for use by the mining industry? Has the decisions by this government and by COAG helped to create a crisis bigger than what it needed to be? Clearly it doesn't care about the cost, the cost to residents, the cost to the economy and the impact on competiveness, and the cost to the environment. Any government or opposition politician that supports the privatisation of water, the common property of all Australians, doesn't deserve to govern or to be in parliament.

John Caldecott
6th March 2009