DROUGHT has dragged the water-guzzling Cubbie Station to the brink of collapse, with administrators poised to take over the nation’s biggest cotton producer. The National Australia Bank is seeking the urgent repayment of a $320 million mortgage over the 93,000ha southern Queensland property, which can store enough water to fill Sydney Harbour. Cubbie Group chairman Keith De Lacy - a former Queensland Labor treasurer - refused to say yesterday if voluntary administrators would be appointed this week. But he told The Australian on Monday that none of the five bidders in a firesale of the property had offered enough to cover the massive bank debt, and said the bank “wants to get its money back”.

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The launch of the international tender campaign sparked national debate over whether the NSW, Queensland or federal governments should buy Cubbie Station to provide environmental water flows for the Murray-Darling Basin river system. The governments all subsequently ruled themselves out of the tender process. The station, plus two smaller properties, which form part of the same sale, have a total land area of 93,329 hectares and 538,800 megalitres of water storage capacity - enough water to fill Sydney Harbour with some left over.

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Updated on Monday, October 12, 2009 at 07:50AM by stevem

Updated on Monday, October 12, 2009 at 07:56AM by stevem

PETER Garrett has put off a decision on whether to approve the Rann government’s $130million weir across the Murray River until next year, possibly until after the March state poll. The federal Environment Minister was scheduled today to make an announcement about the fate of the 2.6km temporary weir near Pomanda Island, 86km southeast of Adelaide and 12km from Wellington. But a spokesman yesterday said Mr Garrett had decided to extend the timeframe for a decision “to consult and seek independent advice from scientific experts about the proposal and ensure the outcomes of studies under way … can properly be taken into account”.

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Updated on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 11:22AM by stevem

FORMER federal Liberal minister Bronwyn Bishop wants water pumped from north Queensland to the Darling Downs under a new project that draws parallels with a 70-year-old drought-proofing scheme. Ms Bishop yesterday urged the Rudd Government to adopt a $9 billion above-ground, sealed canal plan that would involve water being pumped using solar power. She said the model had been proposed by an Australian who helped devise a similar scheme in the US.

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THE federal-state compromise on water trading has had immediate effect, as farmers in Victoria are already negotiating with the commonwealth to sell more than 80 billion litres of water. The Australian has learned the Victorian Farmers Federation is helping several groups of farmers in the north of the state sell their water rights — worth a total of $64 million on current prices — and exit the industry with some dignity. As reported in The Weekend Australian, the Victorian and federal governments have struck a deal to lift the state’s irrigation cap in some cases to facilitate the commowealth’s $3.1 billion environmental water buyback.

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Updated on Friday, May 29, 2009 at 11:02AM by stevem

KEVIN Rudd has bought the equivalent of half of Sydney’s annual water usage in a $303 million deal with a NSW pastoral company aimed at returning water to the ailing Murray Darling river system. The Prime Minister announced the purchase of 240 billion litres of water entitlements from the Twynam Agricultural Group, which has interests in 285,000 hectares along the Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Macquarie and Gwydir River systems.

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THE South Australian Government is widening its High Court legal challenge aimed at forcing other states to release more water into the Murray River to include a little-known 10 per cent Victorian cap on water trading. The raising of the stakes in the legal brawl by South Australia sets up a fiery showdown between Premier Mike Rann and his Victorian counterpart John Brumby at tomorrow’s Council of Australian Governments meeting in Hobart. Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding last night accused Mr Rann of mounting a “predictable pre-COAG stunt” and urged him to “take some action to improve the health of the Murray River”.

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THANK heavens Kevin Rudd solved the Murray-Darling water crisis last year so that he can fix the global financial one this year. If only. Co-operative federalism, the boom political industry of last year, has become about as sick as the economy. The Council of Australian Governments process is grinding forward at the pace of a glacier, except for those areas that are going backwards. The Adelaide COAG meeting a year ago agreed to set an overall cap on water use in the Murray-Darling Basin and to remove the individual states’ veto power over decisions, giving the federal Government the final say. It wasn’t going to be fully implemented until 2019, when the last of the state water management plans expired, but considering it had not been possible to reach an agreement in the previous 107 years of federation that was real progress. The politicians went to town, with the word historic sprinkled about like confetti and Rudd pronouncing dead the blame game between Canberra and the states.

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THE pastoralist nephew of one of Queensland’s richest men believes he was “crucified” by false scientific claims that he had been developing his property to take water illegally from the last free-flowing river in the Murray-Darling Basin. Jake Berghofer The University of NSW has admitted the research accusing Jake Berghofer was funded by opponents of irrigation development, and has been forced to back away from the findings by some of its most senior scientists. Mr Berghofer said he had been “crucified” by the findings of the university’s School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences that he had breached a moratorium on the Paroo River. “It’s not right that a big university can get away with trying to destroy someone who hasn’t done anything wrong,” Mr Berghofer said.

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Updated on Monday, September 29, 2008 at 08:45AM by stevem

Updated on Monday, October 6, 2008 at 09:06PM by stevem

STEVE Posselt, the environmentalist who paddled and dragged his kayak from Brisbane to Adelaide in 2007 to highlight the parlous state of the Murray-Darling river system, is gearing up for another long haul - this time from Brisbane down the coastline to Sydney. Posselt, a 55-year-old retired civil engineer who spent more than 30 years in the water industry, is making this second epic journey to highlight concerns over the construction of the proposed Traveston Crossing dam on Queensland’s Mary River - a dam that could endanger the survival of the prehistoric lungfish, which Posselt says outdates the dinosaur.

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