It's All about Politics under the Bridge

Federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, recently changed his mind about the sale of water from Queensland's Warrego River -- a decision that had nothing to do with the conclusions of a scientific report commissioned by his government, rather it was all about keeping the peace.

A year ago the CSIRO Murray-Darling Basin Sustainable Yield Project was established to provide governments with "a robust, Basin-wide estimate of water availability on an individual catchment and aquifer basis".

A first report on water availability in the Warrego concluded the planned sale of water under the Queensland Government's water sharing plans would have retained about 90 percent of natural flows in a system that contributes less than one percent of inflows to the Darling River.

But you may well ask why the Queensland was considering auctioning water at all, when it had just signed up to the Federal Government's proposed $3 billion water buyback for the Murray-Darling system.

Well, the water sharing plans were part of Queensland's commitment to a previous COAG (Council of Australian Governments) agreement and were apparently developed using "the best science" in accordance with agreed national policies.

But then again how useful is "the science" when a process is so political?

Add the uncertainties presented by climate change and farmers and environmentalists and politicians can really claim whatever they like.

Take the recent CSIRO report -- the report Mr Turnbull used to stop the sale of water from the Warrego River.  It concludes that given climate change, there could be an increase in inflows to the Warrego River of 28 percent or a decrease of 44 percent.

Environmentalists focused on the possible 44 percent decrease and claimed there should be no sale.  Queensland irrigators could have used the same data to claim that, given there is a potential 28 percent increase from climate change and the diversions are going to have about a three percent impact on inflows under any scenario the sales should go ahead.

Given also that the Environment Minister lives in the inner Sydney seat of Wentworth, where just about everyone believes the Murray-Darling basin is already in ruin and that we already have a climate crisis, I wonder why he even bothered with the CSIRO report at all.

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