Clarence Valley pours scorn on Nationals has-been over past water policy

The Daily Examiner, 30 May 2009

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Hard on the heels of recent Clarence River flooding former Nationals MP for Page Ian Causley again raised the spectre of Clarence water diversion in a The Daily Examiner letter to the editor last Wednesday.

The response was swift and predictable - with a former Clarence Valley shire councillor accusing him of leaving a water policy legacy which is costing Australia "countless millions to clean up".

"Over my dead body" - a reminder of the water wars

Published in The Daily Examiner letters column on 27 May 2009:

It is on again.

Floods in the Clarence and droughts in the Murray bring out the ratbags.

On my walking and paddling trip down the Darling in 2007 I encountered a host of people, nearly everyone in fact, who wanted the Clarence River diverted inland.

In 2008 we had a Fellow of Engineers Australia advocating the same. Now in 2009 we have the Citizens Electoral Council issuing a press release about the desirability of the scheme and radio programs picking up on it.

We diverted the Snowy River inland destroying much of it, created severe salinity issues, took the sustainable dairying industries from the Northern Rivers to irrigated land in the Murray basin, created huge wealth for some and drove many Victorians to suicide when the grand ideas fell over.

After 5,000 kilometres of dragging and paddling a kayak, with decades of engineering experience in the water industry, I have been humbled. I came to realise that a river is much more than we were taught at university. The link between ground water and surface water is inextricable. The effect of taking any water out of a river can be profound.

But people don't seem to get it. They think that we can carry on with even more arrogance. Look at what has been destroyed already by our attitude and still we do not learn.

There is one thing the people of the Darling understood. "You can divert the Clarence over my dead body," l told them.

They didn't like it but they understood.

There are plenty of us who will fight for the river but be warned, the issue will never die. We just have to be ready - always.

STEVE POSSELT
Grafton resident 1952-1969
Author of Cry Me a River

Clarence River 2009 flooding brings forth those old dodgy claims

From North Coast Voices on Tuesday 26 May 2009.

When the first inklings appeared of a coming May 2009 flood event in the Clarence Valley one local warned me that such flooding would be used to raise the issue of further damming in the Clarence River catchment area.

Sure enough, yesterday climate change denialist Jennifer Marohasy opened her mouth and displayed a level of ignorance which quite frankly surprised:

It doesn’t matter what time of year you drive through this region, known as the Northern Rivers District, it is always green and the wide Clarence is always brimming with water.

Oh dear, let's ignore the fact that the Clarence River is salt from above Grafton right down to the river mouth, that it appears to brim with water because of a strong tidal influence, stay silent on the fact that there is a large dam on one of its principal freshwater tributaries and let's also conveniently forget that the Clarence Valley goes in and out of drought with the same regularity as the rest of the NSW North Coast.

I honestly don't have the patience to correct the many misconceptions on which her post is based, so I'll just refer all to the blog A Clarence Valley Protest which was created during the last big John Howard - Malcolm Turnbull push to rob the Clarence catchment of its fresh water and, which includes political responses at local, state and federal level.

Fending off Barnaby Joyce's ambition

Letter to the Editor published in The Daily Examiner on Thursday 29 January 2009:

So Queensland Liberal National Party Senator, Barnaby Joyce, is considering the poisoned chalice (thrust towards him by John Howard) and may yet abandon the Senate and seek election to the House of Representatives.

If there was one thing pointing to this politician's foolishness it would be the fact that he is reportedly considering such a move with one eye on the seat of Page in the NSW Northern Rivers.

He must have the shortest of memories himself or think that people in the Clarence Valley have such faulty recall that they would fail to remember that he supported the Howard-Turnbull push to dam and divert water from the Clarence River catchment.

Yes, baying at the back of that particular water raider's pack came Senator Joyce, who sat on the Senate RRAT Committee inquiry into additional water supplies for south-east Queensland where he made it plain that he was not adverse to any proposal to steal Clarence freshwater so that his Queensland mates could continue their unsustainable irrigation practices [April-August 2007].

He also voted against The Greens motion in the Senate which read in part:
"That the Senate:....(b) calls on the Federal Government to: (i) abandon plans for damming the Clarence, Tweed, Richmond and Mann Rivers;" [C'wealth Hansard,Senate,proof issue,19 August 2007,p.p. 33-34].

As late as the middle of last year he was still including mention of the Clarence catchment in his discussions on water supply:
"You can't create water with money. That means you have to think about bringing it from somewhere else, like the Gulf or the Clarence." [The Land, 13 August 2008]

Voting for Barnaby Joyce to fill a federal seat anywhere on the NSW North Coast would be allowing the water raiders to once again get a foot in the door after Northern Rivers communities had so firmly slammed that same door shut in 2007.

Yours faithfully,

JUDITH M. MELVILLE

NSW Nationals get ready to betray Northern Rivers over water security and energy

In an effort to differentiate themselves from the regionally unpopular Liberal Party, the NSW Nationals went to the support of their federal counterparts contesting the November 2007 federal election by promising that rivers on the NSW North Coast would be safe from water diversion schemes and backing away from calls to place commercial nuclear power plants in the Northern Rivers region.

Less than seven months later the story changes.
According to the Tweed Daily News, the Nationals NSW secretariat (at its conference last weekend) resolved to "support greater efforts to reduce eastern water lost to the ocean and more in-depth ways to turn water inland".

The party's newly elected vice-chair, Jeremy Challacombe from Grafton, tries to present himself as a new-style National but just parrots the same old line from party diehards on water and energy.
Indeed, in The Daily Examiner on Wednesday 18 June 2008 Mr. Challacombe had the gall to try and present the Lithgow-led push to once again try and grab Northern Rivers fresh water supplies as "the motion was more about better water management than river diversion".

Mr. Challacombe would be well aware that water in the Clarence catchment area (the principal target of would-be water raiders) is very well managed for sustainable outcomes.
His willingness to support investigation of "nuclear options" is also disappointing for many in the Northern Rivers region.

Here they come again?

On the last day of 2007 it appears that the National Water Commission wants to blame everyone, but itself and its former political masters, for the continuing lack of an adequate response to long-term drought.
Unfortunately this also means that the Commission is obliquely taking aim at the NSW Northern Rivers region once more.
It seems that damming coastal rivers, such as the Clarence River or one of its tributaries, is still on the minds of both water barons and bureaucrats.

"Mr Matthews also criticised governments for failing to charge the full cost of water supply, and for implementing "policy bans" - positions taken for political reasons, such as the government stance on desalination plants, dams and other infrastructure.
"It is really important that they should all be on the table, they should go through a process of analysis, logic and evidence," he said.
"To have a policy ban at the outset is, in my view, indefensible."
See link:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22988794-643,00.html

The Rudd Government and local Labor MPs Janelle Saffin and Justine Elliot need to remember that the Clarence Valley voted them in on the back of an unequivocal assurance that a Labor federal government would not seek or endorse water diversion from the Clarence River catchment area.

Clarence River now safe from water raiders

The Howard Government was soundly defeated at the Australian federal election last night, with outgoing Prime Minister John Howard tipped to be ousted by Labor in the seat he has held since first entering parliament.
The Nationals look like going into Opposition, along with their coalition partner the Liberal Party, with a reduced number of regional and rural seats.
The NSW Northern Rivers now has two of its three elected federal representatives drawn from the Australian Labor Party which gave a firm commitment earlier this year not to dam and divert waters from the Clarence River catchment area.

To see how the local political battle played out got to North Coast Voices:
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com/

More than three thousand Clarence Valley residents petition NSW Parliament

A petition signed by more than 3,000 Clarence Valley residents was tabled in the NSW Parliament by the NSW Minister for Lands, Tony Kelly, on 8 November 2007.

The minister called on the Howard Goverment to clarify its position on damming the Clarence River before people in the Clarence Valley go to vote at the Federal Election on 24 November.

"There still remains a deep concern among residents of the Clarence Valley that the dam and diversion of water to Queensland proposed by the Federal Coalition will go ahead. That concern has been fuelled by the Coalition's ambiguous position and their continual muddying of the waters about their true position on the dam........Dam the Clarence and the fishing industry, one of the largest industrires in the region, would be decimated." [The Daily Examiner,Grafton,"Clarence no-dam petition tabled in NSW Parliament",12 November 2007,p.5]

Clarence River diversion still a hot potato in election year

Despite every indication to the contrary, the Federal Coalition continues to deny its plan to raid Clarence River catchment water.
See link:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22689001-30417,00.html

Last Wednesday Kevin Rudd challenged Messrs Howard and Turnbull on the dam issue. Mr. Turnbull's response was that his pledge not to dam the Oxley River, in another valley further north, really meant the Clarence as well. [The Daily Examiner, Grafton,"Turnbull's dam idea dumb: Rudd",2 November 2007,p.5].

I saw a copy of Mr. Turnbull's letter to the Nationals candidate for Richmond concerning the Oxley River. To put it baldly - Malcolm Turnbull lies.

Is Tenterfield trying to create a local dam in order to raid the Clarence River?

According to the Clarence Environment Centre, Tenterfield Shire Council continues its plans for a dam on the Mole River, a relatively small unregulated river with no existing water gauges and no legislated environmental flow.

After a representative of the Centre recently visited the area and spoke with Tenterfield Shire Council's General Manager, suspicions remain that this new dam proposal might be a second front in the water raiders' efforts to steal Clarence River freshwater.

No evidence could be found to justify the proposed 500 gigalitre dam capacity based on apparently moderate flows within the Mole River's approximately 200 square kilometre catchment.
To keep this dam filled and capable of passing water through to the Murray-Darling river system as intended, a second water source is likely to be required.

Tenterfield Shire Council is on record as wanting an interbasin transfer from the Clarence River catchment involving similar volumes of water to that proposed for this new dam.

See link:
http://tenterfield.yourguide.com.au/news/local/general/taking-mole-river-dam-bid-to-state-cabinet/1079066.html

What Australia' failure to come to grips with climate change is leading to

An elderly Sydney man was severely beaten and later died after a dispute over water use.

See link:
 http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22683984-1702,00.html

Turnbull plan to privatise urban-regional water authorities off the agenda until after federal election

It has been reported that the Federal Minister for Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull, has failed to get Cabinet support for his planned $5.5 billion buy into and eventual privatisation of metropolitan and regional water authorities.
See link:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22671368-29277,00.html

It appears that the Howard Government doesn't want to rock the water boat anymore during this Federal Election campaign.
Given its track record, this push against regional water authorities in particular will reactivate if a Coalition government is re-elected.
One has to worry about the eventual fate of North Coast Water and the possible loss of local control over this Clarence Valley Council business unit.