Todays Headlines
“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” — Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
DEMOCRACY !
USE IT OR LOSE IT !
Start a conversation with your local Member of Parliament today
Gympie Muster organisers reject dam gag claims
The organisers of the Gympie Country Music Muster, in south-east Queensland, say they did not attempt to gag performers from speaking out against the controversial Traveston Crossing dam during this year’s event. Singer John Williamson told the audience during last night’s performance that he had been asked not to wear a shirt with the slogan ‘Save the Mary River turtle’ on it. He proceeded to speak out about the dam during his gig.
John Williamson with Travis
Climate Torch Mary River Relay - the events (5-6 Sept)
Welcome the arrival of the Climate Change Torch to the Mary River. Send the Mary River your well wishes from the foot bridge spanning the upper Mary. Welcome to Country ceremony, dances and kids will love the Mary River Characters. Special guests discuss what the river means to the communities and share 2 years of research and investigation into the proposal. Musicians, wholefoods and like minded people. We’ll send off the torch with a vision of what is sustainable and possible for our Valley and this region. A Brisbane based Save the Mary River group has now formed.
New members welcome.
Dam ‘a disaster for all’
THE Queensland Government has for the first time admitted its proposed Traveston Crossing dam would be an environmental, social and financial disaster, all the way downstream to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island. And, according to Gympie Regional Council Works Committee chairman Larry Friske, associated sewerage disposal problems could send the council broke. Tighter Environmental Protection Agency requirements for effluent disposal came as an ironic counterpoint to the same agency’s admissions, revealed yesterday, that council would have to plan for periods of “zero flow of the Mary River due to the Traveston Dam”. In a further irony, the EPA has also rejected, on river health grounds, a council plan for land-based disposal.
Sean Leahy’s cartoons from the Courier Mail
It is 13 years since a humble koala sanctuary brought down Queensland’s Goss Labor government - and now a dam is threatening the Bligh Government. Opposition to the Traveston Dam is building, with emotion on both sides clouding the real issues. Now three have Queenslanders floated an alternative dam site they say will appease the greens and still satisfy the state’s water needs. However, in an echo of the approach that felled Goss, the Bligh Government hasn’t given the plan full consideration, the men say.
The state government has delayed building part of its water grid, instead planning to siphon 65 million litres of water a day from Baroon Pocket Dam until late 2011. The coalition’s infrastructure spokeswoman Fiona Simpson said the delay could be an indication that the government was preparing to dump the Traveston dam down the track. “I think it is a sign that Traveston dam might be wobbly because you wouldn’t build one without the other,” Miss Simpson said. The cost of stage two of the pipeline has increased from $400 million to $500 million in the last estimates and it would be an expensive white elephant without the dam.
FREE Posters… with FREE postage to you!
Check out our new posters!
The Fraser Island poster is intended for our national/international supporters. It represents just what is at stake here. The Shopping for Other Alternative poster is targeted at Queenslanders - the taxpayers that will be expected to foot the bill for this massive planning blunder.
Display them at your workplace, uni, bus stop, outside your fave club… wherever!
It’s a critical time in the NO DAM campaign, with the Federal Government poised to review the issue and make a decision on whether it should be allowed to proceed.
NOW IS THE TIME TO TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK!
Carolyn Tucker
It could be the first sign of an inevitable showdown. Four months after the Sunshine Coast community delivered an unambiguous message at the ballot box, the Property Council has indicated it is not going to accept limits on growth and development lying down. It has warned of diabolical consequences if this policy is pursued and the region is shaping up as a key battleground in the debate about the continued rapid expansion championed by the development industry and backed by the state government. Mayor Bob Abbot romped home in the March elections with around 70% of the Coast-wide vote and up to 95% in his former Noosa Shire – an increase of more than 20% on his 2004 result.
Bill Hoffman
The stories of courage in the face of despair I heard from residents at Kandanga, Eumundi and Eudlo last week are the human face of a government that just does not get it. The pig-headed insistence that the Traveston Crossing Dam will be built flies in the face of all logic and puts at risk some of south east Queensland’s prime natural assets and food-producing land. Investment in a dam that will never work as an efficient source of water denies the real science of climate change, and ensures that our adaptation to that change has lost time when we can least afford it.
THE proposed Traveston Dam near Gympie could pump up to 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere each year, a new report says. The University of Technology Sydney report said the Queensland Government had not accounted for thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions which would be produced each year by pumping up to 70 million tonnes of water from the dam to Brisbane.
Despite these catastrophes, major water projects are still going forward, such as planning, 22 swamps and 19 power plants in the valley behind the Tigers turkish government, against whom spoke today Ana Irving; four hydroelectric dams of the river Klamath in California (USA) Leaf Hillman has also criticized in El Faro, the large dam that Australian plans to the Executive since 2006 in the town of Traveston, whose grave consequences has denounced Edna Glenda Pickersgill, or the dam of Yacyretá between Paraguay and Argentina, Which already led to the eviction of 40,000 people and whose expansion project flooded 200,000 hectares of cropland and leaving 80,000 others homeless.
Those who have been following the Save The Mary River campaign would be pleased to hear that the plight of the Mary River has received a good hearing at World Expo, and that Glenda Pickersgill was presented with a ‘Green Dragon’ award on behalf of SaveTheMaryRiver in Zaragoza.
Local Government Association of Queensland executive director Greg Hallam said the government’s actions were at complete odds with the centrepiece of its amalgamation argument that it would make stronger councils. Mr Hallam said the state had short-changed councils $200 million of the real cost of amalgamations. The eventual three to five percent savings from that process are still three to five years ago, although the real cost is payable now. Mr Abbot said the council was now $26 million out of pocket according to the auditor-general’s valuation.
From the Swamp News archives:
Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting
Ratepayers high and dry
While Gunns Ltd struggles to secure finance for its controversial Tamar Valley pulp mill which labours under a cloud of doubt over its environmental impacts and diminishing public support, a further challenge to its future is being played out in a Victorian court. This challenge has ramifications not just for the pulp mill, but for environmental regulation across Australia.
Traveston Dam opponents say they will take their fight to the High Court, but the government company preparing for construction rejects claims Traveston can be replaced by a modern desalination plant. Queensland Water Infrastructure Pty Ltd was set up by the Queensland Government to get the controversial Traveston Crossing Dam project near Gympie ready to be built by 2011.
The Traveston Crossing Dam proposal has been rejected hands down – literally – by a meeting of leading Australian engineers in Brisbane earlier this month. Engineers Australia called the meeting, in association with its Queensland Division Water Panel and the Society for Sustainability and Environmental Engineering, to consider the engineering profession’s response to the government’s draft strategy for drought proofing south-east Queensland
Hundreds of anti-Traveston Dam protesters have booeed and jeered Premier Anna Bligh as she arrived at the Hervey Bay Community Cabinet meeting. Ms Bligh arrived to about 400 protesters holding signs saying “Don’t damn the Mary”, and “Save our Mary”. Police ushered the Premier inside the Wide Bay TAFE to avoid the crowd.
Rudd to face big protest on Traveston dam
With federal environment minister Peter Garrett maintaining his silence on the controversial Traveston Dam, protesters will set their sights on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd when he arrives on the Gold Coast this weekend. Mr Rudd is due on the glitter strip for the two-day state Labor conference being held at the convention centre. Campaigners have sent the call out to thousands to join the June 21 march to take their message to state and federal representatives.
A BLAST FROM THE PAST
- how Green is our PM?
Mr Rudd described the SMEC report into four new dams to pump water to Queensland as being full of assumptions and generalisations. “There’s no site visits, no costings, it looks to me as though it’s been done on Mr Turnbull’s kitchen table.” Mr Albanese said that various solutions to Queensland’s water shortage were already underway, including the largest project for greywater recycling in the southern hemisphere, a desalination plant at Tugun, and better water efficiencies.
“We will not support a dam at Tyalgum, it’s that simple.” said Mr Rudd, which earned him rousing cheers.
Turnbull’s Proposal to Dam the Clarence River
Anthony Albanese Media Statement -(Federal Shadow Minister for Infrastructure & Water, Manager of Opposition Business in the House)
Malcolm Turnbull’s proposal for a dam on the Clarence River and a pipeline from northern NSW into south east Queensland lacks detail and smells of politics.
With one hand, Malcolm Turnbull is withholding vital Commonwealth support for a well planned water recycling scheme in south east Queensland, and with the other hand he is pushing a massive dam and pipe scheme that lacks critical details.
It is extraordinary that Malcolm Turnbull’s own Report concedes there were “no detailed site investigations” and that the financial analysis in the Report was “based on a number of sweeping assumptions due to the restricted time frame, the nature of the study and the lack of access to recent financial data”
Federal Labor is always open to ideas about how we best manage water, but the Queensland Government already has a properly costed strategy to provide long term water security for south east Queensland and implementation is well advanced.
Damming the Clarence River and piping water to Queensland would probably be very energy intensive and may cause significant economic and environmental harm to northern NSW.
Labor is concerned that damming the Clarence River may have a significant negative affect on local communities in northern NSW, especially on the fishing industry which is vital for Grafton, Yamba, Iluka and Mclean.
DAM UPDATES
A new scientific report leaked to the ABC warns parts of the lower Murray River may be beyond recovery without water by October. But the Rudd Government has deferred consideration of the report until a meeting of the Murray-Darling Ministerial Council in November. The report, prepared by a scientific panel and leaked to the ABC, warns there are six months to save crucial parts of the Murray-Darling Basin.
It’s now been two years since the State Government proposed building the environmental, socially and economically disastrous Traveston Dam on the Mary River. In that two years, the campaign to stop the dam and preserve the Mary River has gathered momentum and widely varied support from groups and individuals around the globe.
Don’t Murray the Mary post cards
We have 12000 so we want to get them out with our flyers and by any other means. They cost just the postage and are meant to be handed out everywhere.
COMING EVENTS
It’s a busy time in the diary of a Save the Mary River campaigner…there’s protests to attend and postcards to address…and unless you keep reading, you might miss out!
Picket Parliament
MARY RIVER GROUPS UNITE TO CREATE WORLD’S LARGEST COD FISH, DOK’KU
LETTER CAMPAIGN
POSTCARD AND LETTER CAMPAIGN
Distributors Needed!
Just in case you thought the Traveston Dam fight was all dried up, here’s an update from anti-dam campaigner Ian Mackay about where it’s at and what to expect.
STOPPING TRAVESTON DAM YOUR QUICK GUIDE (PDF File)
Travis the Mary River Turtle Plush Toy is now available for $20, all proceeds go to
AFTCRA Inc to help protect turtles in the wild and in educating the general public about threats to their survival.
Lungfish left high and dry
Roger Currie
The Beattie government was given approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC) to build the Paradise Dam (on the Burnett River, upstream of Bundaberg) by the Howard government under Minster Kemp on January 25, 2002. On August 8, 2003 the minister varied the approval requiring the Queensland Government to comply with nine conditions to demonstrate successful mitigation to ensure that a “significant impact” did not occur to the Neoceratodus forsterii, commonly known as the Australian lungfish. Condition 3 of the variation of approval was that: “Burnett Water must install a fish transfer device on the Burnett River Dam suitable for lungfish. The fishway will commence when the dam becomes operational.”
Saving the Mary River
A very good article, by Jenny Stewart, which neatly summarises the issues and of the affects (of the Queensland Government’s decison to Dam the Mary) on residents.
Fiona Simpson announces QLD Opposition’s Water Policy
The Mary River Project
You Tube Video
Confronting the worst drought on record, Australia’s fastest growing region is running out of water. On the cusp of a state election, 27th April, 2006, Premier Beattie is desperate to solve a looming ‘apocalyptic’ water shortage. He flies by helicopter into the Mary River Valley north of Brisbane to announce the construction of a dam the size of Sydney harbour. It is a shock, ironclad decision that sends waves through unconsulted government departments, councils and local communities. A fight breaks out.
The Traveston Crossing dam site near Gympie was possibly the worst example of a dam site in Australia, the Federal Shadow Environment Minister Greg Hunt said yesterday. Mr Hunt toured the Mary River Valley for several hours yesterday with residents of the town of Kadanga, which will be half-covered by water from the Traveston Crossing Dam behind Gympie. “I look at this site and I think this is about the worst example of a possible dam site in Australia,” Mr Hunt said. He said he had three objections to the site, which was not the top site selected by the Queensland Government in 2006, but had the highest dam yield.
Bill Hoffman
Quite clearly, the construction of desalination plants with the capacity to produce twice the daily flows from Traveston, at a fraction of the cost, appears a better option than flooding one of the state’s most productive agricultural regions. Ms Bligh has described the Tugun plant’s capacity of 125 megalitres a day as being sufficient to supply 900,000 homes. This compares with the 120 megalitres that would come from the Kawana and Marcoola sites, and the 70 megalitres Traveston would produce.
Wide Bay Burnett Conservation Council’s Roger Currie says Queensland Water Infrastructure (QWI) will be ordered to complete an extra environmental report before the project is referred to the Federal Government for approval.
“We’ve been given information that the Queensland Government is seriously looking at creating another EIS,” he said. “That would be based on the fact that the submissions have clearly shown that this EIS doesn’t address the terms of reference and doesn’t show that the matters of national environmental significance can be adequately protected.”
Queensland Water Infrastructure officials should be prosecuted, not protected, over their failures to meet environmental requirements attached to Commonwealth approval for the Paradise Dam, Save the Mary River Group secretary David Kreutz said yesterday. Mr Kreutz said it was ridiculous a State Government that wanted to dam the Mary River should be in charge of auditing its past performance and should then appoint its dam construction company to conduct the audit.
“When you get audited by the Taxation Department, they don’t just ask you if everything’s OK and then let you check your own figures. “That’s not what an audit is,” he said.
DAM ALTERNATIVES
The great water debate: dam v desal
Carolyn Tucker
Dams versus desalination: which is the better alternative to secure water supplies for the parched south-east? Debate has raged since the government unveiled its controversial plan to build the $1.7 billion Traveston Dam and has been reignited with the admission that water prices are set to soar due to a blow-out in infrastructure costs. The government’s $9 billion water grid is expected to force average household water bills on the Sunshine Coast up by almost $200 by 2012-13. Other households in the south-east will be slugged even more as taxpayers pick up the tab for hundreds of kilometres in interconnecting pipelines, two new dams, a desalination plant at Tugun and a new recycling scheme
Kevin Ingersole from for the Save the Mary River Action group said the government had been withholding information about alternatives to the dam, because it would soon become obvious that the public was being sold a pup. “One of the key points that has been made consistently to the coordinator-general in hundreds of submissions on the Traveston Dam Environmental Impact Statement the lack of any half serious attempt to define and consider and compare the alternatives,” he said. “Taxpayers should be flooding their MPs with faxes and emails and phone calls, ‘saying how dare you treat us like idiots and waste our money like this’?
Ms Bligh said. “A gas-fired power station emits half the greenhouse gases of a coal-fired station. “As well, coal seam gas contains only about 3 per cent carbon dioxide and the carbon dioxide produced can be pumped back into the coal seam as part of the gas extraction process.
“An added benefit will be that part of the gas extraction process produces large volumes of underground water – equivalent to about a quarter of Brisbane’s annual consumption – which can be used after further processing to help drought-stricken areas.
A water source has been discovered that could supply parched parts of Queensland with billions of litres every year for decades. The coal-seam gasfields being developed by the Queensland Gas Company in the Surat Basin near Condamine will produce enough water to meet nearly a quarter of Brisbane’s annual needs for at least 30 years, the company’s experts say.
The state opposition says the government’s “foolish” announcement to put two temporary mobile desalination plants into the Brisbane River to make up the shortfall in the water grid has “exposed the Traveston Dam lie”. Acting premier Paul Lucas yesterday announced the government would put the plants on the river to ensure water supplies if the record drought continued. The plan for two mobile desalination plants on barges would cost about $550 million on top of $125 million worth of preliminary works including site selection, surveying, water modelling, environmental studies and geotechnical works. The contingency moves, which will be assessed and approved at the end of the wet season in March or April, could pump an extra 144 megalitres of water a day into the region by the end of next year, even if the worst drought on record worsens.
“That’s enough extra water for more than a million people a day,” Mr Lucas said.
Commenting on plans for mobile desalination plants on the Brisbane River, announced by Deputy Premier Paul Lucas at the weekend, Mr Gibson said it was about time. Firstly I want to commend the Government for finally looking to additional non climate dependant sources of water to address this water crisis,” Mr Gibson said. However, he said the announcement also showed that Mr Lucas could not recognise a good deal when presented with one.
“If he just looked at the numbers he would see that the cost of water from the mobile desalination barges is just $12,857.00 per megalitre compared with $28,571.00 per megalitre for water from the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam.
“This represents a saving of more than 50 per cent in the cost of the water not to mention the reduction in pumping costs as the barges would be located directly where the water is needed in South East Queensland not some 160km away to the north.
“Put simply that’s more than $l billion less that this Government needs to raise in taxes to pay for the water.”
Trave$ton Cro$$ing Dam - most expensive urban water supply in the world!
***MUST READ***
Darren Edward:
“So, pumping 70,000 ML per year of water from Traveston to Brisbane will literally consume more electrical power than a desalination plant producing the same amount of water. Over 50% more! Although long-distance pumping might be the best solution for dry inland locations like Kalgoolie in WA, it clearly doesn’t stack up for coastal cities with an abundent supply of nearby seawater (i.e. the Pacific Ocean) such as Brisbane and the Gold Coast.”
MEMBER for Gympie, David Gibson, recently travelled to Western Australia to see for himself how the driest capital city in Australia plans for water security into the future. The Nationals’ Gympie representative was keen to views both Perth’s $387 million desalination plant, which is the largest plant of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, and the $25m water reclamation pIant which is also one of the first of its kind in Australia.
This report found that if rainwater tanks were installed in five per cent of households in Sydney, Melbourne and south east Queensland each year, that would provide as much additional water as planned desalination plants in Sydney and on the Gold Coast and from the first stage of the Traveston Dam on the Mary River. But only 17 per cent of households have rainwater tanks. So here we are being told what we know really, that tanks are very cost-competitive compared with dams and desalination plants.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Water manager Sunwater has conceded its mechanism at
Paradise Dam to help fish navigate the dam wall has never worked in both directions. The fish ways were designed to assist vulnerable fish including the rare lungfish to continue to travel through the system.
Believe it or not, this the entire extent of technical information contained in the 1600 page + Traveston EIS detailing the construction and operation of the fishway that will ensure the survival of the Mary River Cod, Mary River Turtle and Australian lungfish. This REALLY IS figure 4.18 of the EIS document. Believe me. Check it out. I’m not joking. It is really there (and that is all there is). This is the SUM TOTAL of design information about the fishway. Aaaaaaagh!
SWAMPNEWS Artist’s interpretation of how the fishway will actually work (below)
AFTCRA Report Released
A summary that AFTCRA Inc. was asked to produce for David Gibson from the full report “The Burnett River snapping turtle, Elseya sp. (Burnett River) in the Burnett River Catchment, Queensland, AUSTRALIA. This document is not available for public scrutiny and we have been requesting it for over 12 months.
Anyone who enjoyed the Mary River turtle story on ABC Stateline last September will be pleased to know that the follow up has gone to air. The story features AFTCRA Inc, Roger Currie and Barnaby Joyce.
Hope you enjoy the story!
I have heard from a few reliable sources that the official ‘party’ line within the Queensland labor party regarding the impact of the Traveston Crossing Proposal on lungfish goes something like this:
“They haven’t bred in the Mary River for over forty years - so their only hope for species survival is a captive breeding programme and Traveston won’t make any significant difference to the chances of species survival if a captive breeding programme is in place.”
A $35 million marine conservation centre will be built as part of the $1.7 billion Traveston Crossing Dam but conservationists fear it could
become a museum to extinct species. Premier Anna Bligh acknowledged today that any dam of the scale of the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam had the potential to create impacts that must be addressed.
Captive breeding plan no cure for lungfish extinction
A lungfish expert says a captive breeding program will not stop the species from being pushed to the brink of extinction. Professor Jean Joss from Macquarie University gave evidence at last week’s Senate hearing in Canberra into the Traveston Crossing dam near Gympie in south-east Queensland.
RESIDENTS in the wider Mary Valley region are in for a rude shock if they take a close look at the State Government’s environmental impact statement (EIS) for the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam. Now properties outside the dam footprint are being earmarked as vegetation offset areas to replace inundated riparian areas and to mitigate predicted greenhouse emissions from the water storage.
THE Queensland Government was yesterday accused of continuing to fudge the rainfall figures in the proposed Traveston Crossing dam catchment. Nationals Deputy Leader and Shadow Infrastructure Minister Fiona Simpson raised the issue in state Parliament yesterday morning. She said the Government had been caught out using rainfall figures from an area that is not even in the Mary River catchment to try and justify their decision to build the controversial Traveston Crossing Dam.
GLOBAL WARMING REFLECTED IN THE EVOLUTION OF YOUR UNDIES THROUGH THE DECADES…
Queensland Water Infrastructure (QWI) has briefed major contractors on the likely packaging, delivery and procurement methods to be adopted for the design and construction of the proposed $1.7 billion Traveston Crossing Dam and the proposed $500 million Wyaralong Dam, should these projects gain environmental approval. Representatives from more than 50 companies, including major contractors such as John Holland, Leighton Contractors, Multiplex, McMahon, Thiess and Abigroup attended the briefings. The briefings followed industry research and analysis which determined significant interest in the Traveston Crossing and Wyaralong Dam projects.
Water resources policy officer
Roger Currie says it is a way of taking water from the Mary River without building a dam. “If Minister Turnbull doesn’t allow the dam, therefore it doesn’t get approval and the dam can’t be built, this will still allow the Queensland Government to be able to extract that water, it just means that they won’t have to worry about federal approval for the dam,” he said.
That is the extent of the “report” checking hydrology and leakage for the proposed Traveston Dam in the Mary River, Member for Gympie David Gibson revealed in State Parliament this week. It was reported last Friday that “a report” from the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC) had reviewed the Traveston Dam proposal and supported the State Government’s plans.
SOCIAL IMPACT
DAM opponents will hold their own meetings to uncover the social pain of the shattered Mary Valley community after residents walked out of State Government-run meetings designed to assess the same thing. Save the Mary River Coordinating Group chairman Kevin Ingersole will head up the four meetings to be held in the Mary Valley next month.
When Premier Peter Beattie announced plans to dam the Mary River at Traveston, the Mary Valley community voiced its opposition loud, clear and angrily at rallies and in the media, at every given opportunity. A year on from the Premier’s announcement, a year of living with uncertain futures, has taken its toll on the people of the Mary Valley.
Valley of Despair?
I believe it is a Valley of Champions or Valley of Courage definitely a Valley of Compassion and a great place worth fighting for. The strength we share is not in an unaffected, careless and hopeless mob, but wounded warriors. Casualties are rife but the victory will be sweet because the spirit of this place is not crushed, like a wine that results from the press, the results being produced here are vintage quality.
WE STAND AGAINST ANNA BLIES AND CHEAP POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY
This is a Valley of Life - our opposition are consumed by voracious unsustainable practices - they are the ones with true despair!
Mary River Forever! … Rev Iain Watt
Rev DAVID PITMAN
Moderator - Uniting Church in Australia Queensland Synod
” 400 ministers and members of the Uniting Church in Queensland met in May this year and overwhelmingly expressed their support for the people of the Mary Valley in their battle to stop the construction of the dam at Traveston Crossing and also expressed their dismay regarding the manner in which the Mary Valley community has been treated. I have written to the Premier to convey this information and to this point in time have not received a formal response! We will continue to oppose the construction of the dam in every way we can.”
POLITICAL
“if you want to test a mans character, give him power”. - Abraham Lincoln
Guess who?
?
?
?
WELCOME ABOARD CAPT’N BLIGH
THE NSW Government’s controversial pro-developer laws narrowly passed the Upper House early this morning with some concessions, following overwhelming opposition from the community. President of the NSW Local Government Association, Cr Genia McCaffery, said because of the laws, developers would get what they wanted at the expense of the local community.
“But the campaign by the associations and other organisations has forced the Government to back down, with some concessions including making private certifiers more accountable, trialling the housing codes, and reinstating councils’ right to use levies to fund regional facilities,” she said.
Bligh’s housing plan for coast ‘madness’
State government plans announced yesterday to accommodate at least 75,000 more people on the Sunshine Coast are in conflict with the regional council’s mandate to slow growth to the national average. Coast mayor Bob Abbot said last night he had received a 70% mandate from the electorate for a policy platform of sustainability and slowed growth. Mr Abbot said the council and the state were already struggling to keep pace with the infrastructure needed for existing growth. “It’s just madness,’’ he said.
Senior journalist
Carolyn Tucker examines the uncomfortable links between the government and big business in Queensland, and questions just where the real power and influence lies in this age of forced local authority amalgamations and seized assets.
Tom O’Lincoln
Where is the robust debate?
“The elements of common social and educational background make it easier for big business to get on with other elites such as the federal bureaucracy. A second major way in which the bureaucracy has been aligned with the private sector in recent years is the conceptual blurring of distinctions between public and private sector management methods. Emergence of a common view of constitutes management leads, in turn, to the widely held view among senior public servants that ‘strength and efficiency of a government are more important than its particular programs’. The Financial Review informs us that top bureaucrats today ‘increasingly look and work like CEOs from large private sector corporations”.
ANNA Bligh’s Queensland Budget for 2007-08, presented in State Parliament yesterday, has nothing for Cooloola but tears. There is no substantial good news for the Gympie region. The only major spending in this area, $285 million for the Traveston Crossing dam, is a war chest to destroy the Mary Valley with continued premature bullying of residents out of their properties. In such times, many residents will be angry at Premier Peter Beattie’s new Budget-linked description of his deputy as “Bligh the Builder”. For people driven from their homes and whose communities and towns are threatened with extinction, “Bligh the Wrecker” would be a more appropriate title.
THE office of Queensland Deputy Premier Anna Bligh is under investigation by the state’s anti-corruption body over the alleged stacking of an online opinion poll on the controversial Traveston Dam. The Crime and Misconduct Commission will determine if state legislation has been breached by the illegal use of government computers.
WIN NEWS POLL
“Do you think it’s time for Mary Valley residents to accept their fate?”
Poll results 97% No - 3 % Yes
Despite the drought declaration, Anna Bligh insists that Traveston Crossing remains the best location for a new dam. “The actual catchment area is still the largest, best-performing catchment in the south-east corner,” she said on Friday. “If the dam had been built two to three years ago it would be close to full now.” Local engineer
Darren Edward said the suggestion was ludicrous and the government’s projections were based on pre-2000 data which deliberately ignored the past eight years of drought.
Media Release from the Save the Mary River Coordinating Group
YOU have heard about the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam, you have seen the protests and heard the outcry, and now you can play a real part in forcing the State Government to renege on its mission to dam the Mary River.
“THE survival of South East Queensland depends on the Traveston Crossing dam going ahead,
even if it is not feasible, Premier Peter Beattie has claimed. In an extraordinary address to the Queensland Parliament, Mr Beattie said there was no alternative to the dam, regardless of studies, now under way, which have yet to determine if it is even possible.”
(Gympie Times - 8 JUN 2006)
View Nicholson Animations for his video comments on the proposed Gunn’s Pulp Mill :-
Pulp Rock
Environmentalists are taking legal action against the federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, over his assessment of Gunns’ proposed northern Tasmanian pulp mill.
Lawyers, Gunns and Tassie money
At issue is Lennon’s alleged interference in the assessment process for a $1.5 billion pulp mill proposed on the Tamar River, north of Launceston, on behalf of the timber company Gunns Limited. The Government has been one of the mill’s biggest boosters - not surprising given the likely benefits for the state’s economy and jobs market. But pollution fears, and the likelihood of increased clear-felling of public land (always a controversial issue in Tasmania) has ensured that evaluation of the proposal has been protracted. On February 25, Gunns chairman John Gay expressed concerns to Lennon that the assessment was too slow and said the company risked a $60 million penalty payment on a hedging contract by the end of June.
“Federal Liberal and Federal Labor make a great error — even given the money they receive from Gunns — in thinking there will be no political cost to their endorsement of this pulp mill. Because it is no longer about one more industrial facility. It is about a perversion of our most fundamental values as a society and as a democracy. There needs to be and there must be a royal commission into what has happened here, because nothing less can now clear away the stench that surrounds this project.” - Richard FlanaganBrisbane “should be capital”
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said if Australia was settled now, Brisbane would probably be the capital because of its closeness to Asia and access to water.
Welcome to the World of Water Restrictions
Between 2008 and 2010 the state government will set the price of water, after which it will consider a move to open the water market up to private enterprise..…..Earlier this week Mr Natoli predicted rates would double, but that was before the state government had committed to paying councils compensation. But yesterday he was more concerned that the income streams the councils had from water were being sacrificed to allow the state government to fatten the water industry and sell it at a profit down the line.
In a conference address after his report, McClellan referred to the tension between private companies and their profit motives and the overriding requirement to meet a public need. “[The] public need will generally require the provision of the highest reasonable quality of service. This may be inconsistent with the profit motive and other commercial considerations, which properly direct the actions of the private corporation.
“The inevitable question is whether some essential government services should remain within the ownership and control of government with direct Ministerial responsibility. If ownership is to devolve in whole or in part to the private sector, significant issues remain to be addressed.”
IN 1968, the Queensland government took control of energy generation from city councils; in 1976 they took away retail distribution. This transferred assets and income from local communities to the state until, eventually, 30-something years later, the assets were privatised. It also took a political toll on the councils who let it happen. In 2007, a cash-strapped State Government, which has just raised transfer duty on cars to pay for an increase in mental health spending, will take control of the water reticulation system from councils.
Will history repeat?
The control of water
Kealey: We know we cannot control the sun, nor can we control the air. But we can control water. On the scale of things that are required for human life, it is the most important element that can be controlled.
Kralik: What do you mean when you say “control”?
Kealey: In GATT, the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs, it says that free-flowing water is not a “good”. The key wording is “free-flowing”. If you construct a dam, it is no longer free-flowing, and therefore it becomes private property, owned by somebody, capable of being sold to others, or mortgaged.
Kralik: If it is dammed?
7 SEP 2007: -The Queensland Opposition says the State Government is selling off assets to get out of debt. Queensland Parliament last night passed amendments to facilitate the sale of the Enertrade gas business, and the wind farms run by the Government-owned Stanwell and Tarong power companies. The Government used its numbers in the house to guillotine debate on the amendments and rush them through.
Keynote address by Clyde Cameron to the Victorian Country Conference of the recently amalgamated Association made up of the former Australian Telecom Employees’ Association and Australian Telephone & Phonogram Officers’ Association held at the Clyde Cameron College on 28 April 1989.
“The main thrust of my remarks tonight will be towards the role of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. But before doing so, I want to express a concern I share with a growing army of loyal and lifelong Laborites over the Hawke Government’s attitude towards privatisation of public assets.
Only a few weeks ago Mr. Hawke made noises which suggest that he, at any rate, may still be toying with the idea of selling Australian Airlines and Qantas.
This may not be done in one fell sweep. It could be done in stages. Stage one, could be to continue the crazy practice of compelling the public to pay taxes to itself by taxing its own enterprises.
The next stage could be to deliberately starve them of capital by refusing them the rights enjoyed by Alan Bond & Co. to borrow funds for capital expansion.
And the final stage could be to then pretend that the Government is left with no option but to sell.
Or, it could be to short circuit all three stages in so far as Australian Airlines is concerned, by appointing a Chief Executive who will “co-operate” with its competitor instead of engaging in active competition with it. There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter!
“The SEC is a valuable and profitable asset paid for and owned by Victorians. It is held in trust by the Government for present and future Australians. Each year, after servicing it’s debts, it pays a dividend of over $250 million [Ed: actually $314 million for 1993/94] to the people of Victoria. These dividends are used to build our schools and hospitals, run our trams and buses, and train and equip our police and emergency services. Without the profits of the SEC, and other publicly owned companies such as the Gas & Fuel and Melbourne Water, the only way Victorians would be able to afford these essential services would be through higher taxes”.
A new report warns that south-east Queensland residents could soon be paying some of the world’s highest water charges - partly because of the cost of the much-despised Traveston Dam.
Privatising water would cause more efficient use of the increasingly precious commodity and stimulate important infrastructure investment, Citigroup says. The local arm of the world’s biggest bank is calling on Australia’s state governments to leave the pricing of water to competitive market forces.
Foreign firms vying for dam
OVERSEAS firms are among dozens of businesses lining up to help build Queensland’s controversial $1.7bn Traveston Crossing Dam. Deputy Premier Anna Bligh today welcomed 140 representatives from more than 50 companies for briefings on the tender process for the Traveston Crossing Dam near Gympie, north of Brisbane.
THE state’s shake-up of water assets will allow private companies to sell water to southeast Queensland residents. Origin, AGL, Telstra and even Foxtel could become water retailers alongside or instead of councils. Councils would continue to own pipes but a model proposed by the Queensland Water Commission would introduce retail competition. “You don’t have to own the pipes to sell the water,” said Wayne Gregory, Origin’s public affairs national manager.
“So rather than augmenting supply with water you cannot sell at a profit, you simply impose restrictions and constrain demand. Because you have no competition, nobody can undercut you.” - Malcolm Turnbull (Brisbane Institute-July 2006)
Industry to the rescue
DAMS and desalination plants could become
like toll roads with the
private sector allowed to turn a profit by building and operating water infrastructure. With the State Government facing a $9 billion-plus bill to address southeast Queensland’s water crisis, Water Minister Craig Wallace has insisted
private sector involvement is considered. Mr Wallace recommended a review be undertaken into the benefits of allowing private companies to build infrastructure and sell water to the public.
Bob Baldwin of Baldwin Cartwright Layers and Chris Mount of John Logan Property Valuers
***NEW***
Various video clips and presentations on the Mary River and it’s ecology
