The Full Effects of the Drought
21 May 2009
An interesting report has been released describing the full effects of the drought the murray/darling region has experienced over the past 6 years. The region sustains 3 million people and accounts for 80% of Australia’s agricultural production. It is a remarkable statistic and so far we have been given very simplistic solutions by our politicians.
Government’s only real answer to solving the prolonged drought has been to buy back water licences. Now this is fine for the farmer who sells their licence, but the agriculture dollar goes around 6 times in agriculture communities so the effects over the long term in these communities are devastating.
I am interested to see what former treasurer Peter Costello proposed on Melbourne radio where he suggested the $22 billion spent in the second round of stimulus packages could of more than paid for a pipeline, to pipe water from Australia’s north to the south. Some of the engineering studies for such schemes were completed 20+ years ago, such as damming the Clarence river in northern NSW, yet the political will to go ahead with such schemes has not been there.
With Melbourne city rapidly running out of water, a 21st Century version of the Snowy Mountains scheme is the only permanent solution to south east Australia’s water problems. We cannot live on water restrictions forever.
It can also be legitimately argued that the population should move north – that we should instead move the baulk of our agriculture to the wetter north. I do not have a problem with this as long as it is the most economic solution. There are many crops we cannot grow in northern Australia, particularly grapes so many industries would go permanently out of business. Also the cost of re-settling so many people and re-establishing all that infrastructure would be enormous. This is only back of the envelope stuff but I am confident it would be cheaper to pipe the water down than to move the industry up.