issues
Water
 One of the great myths the Iemma Government continues to peddle is that the significant problems occurring with water allocation in regional NSW are due to the drought.
The Iemma Government would have us believe it is the drought that has prevented water being released from dams and sent down river systems to flood wetland areas, keep them alive, and help graziers and many other family farms survive.
The Iemma Government would have us believe it is simply the drought that is destroying internationally significant wetlands and marsh areas, which have survived numerous droughts over many hundreds and thousands of years.
It is a fact that internationally important wetland areas on the Macquarie, Lower Gwydir and Gingham Rivers are dying from a lack of water while the NSW Government shadow boxes with Queensland over water.
These wetlands are dying because the NSW Government continues to deny them the water they need to survive.
In the Macquarie Marshes, there has not been a bird-breeding season for seven years, due to a lack of water, and essential vegetation, such as reed beds and River Red Gums, is dying or has disappeared.
Enormous damage is done to wetlands when water available in dams upstream is given away to irrigation businesses and the wetlands are left parched.
The Iemma Government continues to insult people in the bush by suggesting drought is the only reason why wetlands and river systems are dying in this state.
The NSW Government is also hiding behind a war of words with Queensland over water rights to divert attention away from its role in destroying internationally listed wetlands on the Gwydir River and Gingham Channel, west of Moree.
Howard Blackburn from “Crinolyn”, one of four landowners who signed the first ever Memorandum Of Understanding with the NSW and Federal Governments in 1999 to protect the Lower Gwydir and Gingham Wetlands under the international RAMSAR Convention, has had enough of rhetoric about water management and hollow promises from the Government.
Symbolically, the landholders signed the MOU with the state and federal governments on World Wetlands Day, 1999, in Moree.
Howard wrote to me and said that the last five years had produced nothing but a string of broken promises and disaster for the wetlands. He has decided to pull out of the RAMSAR listing because state and federal government agencies have failed to live up to their end of the bargain and release enough water from Copeton Dam to keep the wetlands healthy.
This is not a recent problem, but a systematic denial of environmental flows over a number of years in favour of big irrigation businesses.
The wetlands are now a degraded form of their previously healthy state. Howard signed the MOU, as did the other landholders in the wetlands, in good faith and believed a RAMSAR listing would help bring about a fairer distribution of much needed water for the wetlands. This has not happened.
In a good year, when there is water available for all, irrigators get more than 500,000 megalitres of water from Copeton Dam alone, while the Gwydir Wetlands gets only 10,000 megalitres from an allocation for stock and domestic users.
The message in all of these horror stories I have mentioned is clear: the level of water extraction, either from rivers or from aquifers, by irrigators is unsustainable. The unsustainable growth in the irrigation industry in NSW is occurring at the expense of families, of small family farms, of the environment and of water quality.
There is little doubt serious damage has already been done but all is not lost. The Government has a chance to leave a legacy for the future, to think for the future and act to increase the amount of water the environment receives so that the rivers stay healthy, that wetlands survive and that water quality is maintained and improved.
Water Management Amendment Bill 2005
The Government rushed through amendments to the Water Management Act 2000 in the last parliamentary sitting week for 2005. The new laws define environmental flows as the water left over after water has been extracted for irrigation and industry. That is the complete reverse of original intent of the Water Management Act 2000.
Under this legislation, there will be no guaranteed minimum flow for the rivers. In times of drought, the rivers could be allowed to run dry.
Furthermore, the legislation was aimed at preventing a High Court case brought by the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, the "Gwydir Case". It did this by retrospectively validating water management plans. This was an absolute misuse of the parliamentary process and part of an increasing trend of Government interfering in court decisions at the behest of industry and big business.
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