Opinion

For rural and regional communities, especially those crying out for dams for flood and drought mitigation for decades, Budget Paper Number 2 from the Commonwealth 2022-2023 Budget makes depressing reading.

On the night of October 2nd, 66 citizen scientists surveyed for endangered Greater Gliders in native forest across Victoria. The state government has either released these areas of forest for logging in the current Timber Release Plan or plans to release them under the proposed Timber Release Plan (TRP). Surveys were carried out in six locations across the state: Toolangi, Black Range (near Taggerty), Warburton, Wombat, Alberton West, and Colquhuon forest, East Gippsland ... ARR.News ask KFF a few questions.

In 1971 the United States Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz spoke wisely and bluntly about the perils of organic farming. “Before we go back to organic agriculture in this country, somebody must decide which 50 million Americans we are going to let starve or go hungry.”

Our paper published in 2022 shows that, according to DBCA records, bushfires have been seven times more likely on land previously burned by them than on land that they have not burned. Mr Jack Bradshaw’s educated guesses about the causes of karri regeneration prior to 1850 do not change this, they use speculation to distract from the hard evidence we are discussing.

“It is the fight of the fundamental industries – food and power. We should never plan for one to miss out over another.   If the past few years have taught us anything - pandemics, geopolitical unrest and floods, it is we don’t know what is around the corner. Uncertain times call for brave infrastructure investment decisions": Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers CEO Hugh Christie.

The East coast of the island is swollen with water – the bulging rivers purging to sea, or finding relief beyond their banks, the waters spewing and sprawling across paddocks and swirling down streets. The anxiety of sandbagging in the race to beat mother nature is real. The threat of the unknown is immense. The realisation of the brutal damage done: heartbreaking. If only we’d built more dams. Damn.

Over my life I have come to the conclusion there are two type of people: the “could have, should have, would haves”, and the helpers. The “could have, should have, would haves” are the majority. They would have handled things differently, ie, “you should have done things differently and then you could have not been in the trouble you are in”. They were out in force this week when television stations showed the frantic efforts to save broodmares in the Goulburn Valley floods.

Back in 2019, Do Nothing on Dams Dan Andrews, in answer to a direct and simple question put to him by ABC Radio about why his government was committed to doing nothing on dams, provided one of his usual glib responses: “Well dams don’t make it rain.”

Earlier this year a paper was published in an international journal that argued that if left long enough the southern forest of Western Australia was ‘unlikely to burn’. Furthermore that ‘the predicted likelihood of fire in undisturbed forest was 1 in 208 to 1 in 1149 years.’ In my opinion, the methodology used to obtain the results was so badly flawed as to make the conclusions meaningless.

Community members have been left flabbergasted and frustrated at government agencies who threatened prosecution over repairing flood banks which have protected local properties throughout previous high rivers. Community members were told “expect to be flooded if you live on a floodplain” by the same authority that wants to build a flood bank to deliver environmental water to artificially flood the bush.

After 14 work related deaths in the WA agricultural industry over last 18 months, far more than any other state, serious questions need to be asked about why our Ministers have put all their faith in the impact of draconian new industrial manslaughter laws when it's clearly not working.

A former scientist with the State Electricity Commission, the Latrobe Valley’s Ray Burgess, has scathingly attacked AGL’s plan to close Loy Yang A station by 2035, calling it “fairyland thinking” ... Mr Burgess said if a low carbon society was mandated by the voting public, “then we need to seriously be considering a nuclear future, and quickly”.

If you think Australian farmers are worried about the availability of spare parts, then spare a thought for Russian farmers who are suffering under the impact of ever tightening sanctions as a direct result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ... Open the door to Russian ag mechanics ... Is China a parts risk?

The Victorian Labor Government’s promise of jobs with a transition from native forests to plantation forests, announced last week, does not add up, said Forest & Wood Communities Australia (FWCA). As it takes at least 15 years for trees to grow to the minimum harvest age, and the government plans to end native forestry in eight years, timber towns face ruin, with Orbost set to lose 37% of its full-time jobs.

Nillumbik Friends of the Great Forest have followed with interest the developments in the native forest logging industry, in particular the decision by the Andrews government in 2019 to halt native forest logging in 2030. Victoria is well placed to transition to a 100 % plantation industry as we already have considerable areas of plantation ... The industry has every right to be upset with the government for withholding the funding for a fair and just transition ... ARR.News asks NFGF a few questions.

Regional Australians found themselves as the butt of a nasty joke at weekend, with both the new Federal Government and the Opposition treating them like idiots over the critical issue of bank closures. In the ultimate dodgy trick, the final report in to the Taskforce into Regional Banking was snuck out at 4.52pm on Friday evening before a long weekend by the Albanese Government despite the report being a Coalition document overseen by two shadow ministers (Michael Sukkar and Perin Davey) whose current portfolios have nothing to do with treasury, finance, business or regional Australia.

The myths about water are many. They range from Australia being the driest continent on earth, to all of our rivers dying from overuse, right up to the government being required to return water to the environment ... here are some not-so-well-known facts that should be shouted out in the present flood of misinformation about our water resources.

Catastrophic floods and droughts are currently being experienced across the world. Paul Wyrwoll and Quentin Grafton argue that our existing approaches to managing water are not working. We need a new paradigm for how we manage water, a rethinking where human societies work with and nurture the hydrological cycle, instead of trying to master it.