For a prime minister who is often accused to being in too much of a hurry, Kevin Rudd is dragging the chain on two of the biggest issues facing the nation — water and climate change. Despite the need for urgent action, his government is taking a leisurely approach to water shortages in the Murray Darling basin and elsewhere. It is losing momentum on climate change, amid confusion over which minister, Martin Ferguson or Penny Wong, has carriage of the issue.
Wong has formal responsibility for both climate change and water, but Ferguson, as energy minister, often bobs up with proposals to help sectors he favours such as coal. Last week he called for special tax breaks to help produce synthetic transport fuels by gasifying coal. But the process will create carbon dioxide, a contributor to global warming.
If a commercially viable way can eventually be found to capture and store the CO2, that’s fine. But there is no justification for giving special tax breaks for this purpose compared to other low emissions technologies under development. Subsidising the development of wide range of competing technologies should give markets a better chance of choosing the least cost way to reduce emissions.
But the government is much too slow to boost R&D spending to the levels needed to take global warming seriously. It has allocated an average of less than $200 million a year to develop and deploy low emissions technologies over the next few years (excluding the Green Car Innovation Fund which is not about innovation).
Ferguson was on firmer ground 10 days ago when he announced a plan to roll out smart electricity meters to help consumers choose when prices (and CO2 emissions from coal-fired power stations) are lowest. The meters will be of particular value when recharging electric vehicles if they take off as many leading car makers anticipate. Unfortunately, the meters will only be installed in about half the nation’s households by 2017. Lifting this genteel pace should not lead to accusations that the government is moving at a breakneck speed.
Perhaps Wong should be grateful that Ferguson has said little about water. Not that she couldn’t do with some help. Last week it was revealed that a scientific report was given to state and federal ministers in May, confirming earlier warnings that parts of the river near the South Australian end of the basin would die unless flows were restored by October. But water ministers were not due to discuss the report until November.
Wong’s initial response was to repeat that the government is trying to boost river flows in the basin by buying back water licences from irrigators. She didn’t mention that the buy back is spread over ten years — hardly a time table aimed at October.
The South Australian government is pumping water from lakes (which are also in bad shape) into areas it acknowledges is at risk of major acidification and total ecological collapse. Other water could be released from NSW, where the Labor Government is accused of withholding water from down-stream states. But any rescue efforts could easily be too late unless high rainfalls occur in the very near future.
Although the Murray Darling is undoubtedly in crisis, the Commonwealth is leaving many areas outside the basin — most notably the whole of Western Australia —to fend largely for themselves. Basically, the Rudd Government has adopted the Howard Government’s $10 billion water plan, even though it was cobbled together without proper advice, and added another $3 billion.
The first $50 million of the $3 billion allocated to buy back irrigation licenses has been spent. Unlike the excessive extraction which can occur in good seasons, no water is allocated when none’s available, despite an entitlement via a licence. So the $50 million won’t generate extra flows for the rivers until rain makes water available that would otherwise be used for irrigation. An Adelaide university water specialist, Mike Young argues that the 10 year time frame is much too slow and wants a different system used to buy more licenses in the next couple of years.
The dimension of the problem can be seen from contrasting the average annual inflow into the Murray system over the last 10 years of less than 4000 gigalitres (GL) with the total irrigation entitlement of almost 8000 GL and the extra 1500 GL due to be returned to the river under the national water initiative.
Without the resumption of high rainfall levels, the blunt reality is that the extra water considered necessary for the survival of river systems won’t be available if irrigators get anywhere near their full entitlements. But the Murray Darling Basin Commission expects climate change will result in average long term annual inflows of under 5000 GL a year. Unless some other way is found to boost the supplies to the basin, irrigators will have to pay a lot more for a lot less water.
So will the Rudd Government. A recent report from the water trading firm, Waterfind, estimates that Wong’s $3 billion will only buy 540 GL of water — not the required 1500 GL — and take 17 years to do so. Time to find a better, and faster, solution.
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