Chris Griffith and AAP

April 19, 2007

THE drought is now so bad that Australia’s agricultural heartland faces being denied irrigation water, Prime Minister John Howard grimly announced today.
He warned: “If it doesn’t rain in sufficient volume over the next six to eight weeks, there will be no water allocations for irrigation purposes in the basin.”

“The situation in the Murray-darling basin is critical and if it doesn’t rain there will be no allocations for some time,” Mr Howard said in an announcement.

Mr Howard today described the situation as “unprecedentedly dangerous”, following a report of state and federal officials that examined water availability in the Murray-Darling system.

“Unless there are very substantial inflows - and for that read heavy rain leading to runoff into the catchment areas - prior to mid-May 2007, there will be insufficient water available to allow any allocation at the commencement of the 2007-08 water year for irrigation, the environment or for any purposes other than critical urban supplies,” he said.

Mr Howard stressed urban water supplies were not at risk.
It would also be possible for some farmers, particularly those with riverside properties, to draw water for their own personal need but not for their stock, Mr Howard said.

He said all the farmers were receiving support under the government’s Exceptional Circumstances (EC) drought assistance program.

“I will be urgently examining what additional assistance might be appropriate at a Commonwealth level,” he said.

Mr Howard said he was consulting states on releasing the report which contains some commercial-in-confidence material.

“This underlines the critical situation that we face if there is no significant rainfall over the next few weeks,” he said.

“Even if there is significant rainfall, and that of course is very much in the lap of the gods … it may not be possible until late July or well into August to determine whether that rainfall has been adequate, sufficient enough to allow some allocations to be made for irrigation purposes.”

Mr Howard warned the irrigation industries would be in a critical condition unless there was substantial rainfall.

“You are simply not going to have enough water, consistent with the obligation to supply critical human needs to town communities along the river system, you are not going to have enough water to provide any allocation for agriculture,” Mr Howard said.

“The impact that this is going to have on industry, on the horticultural industry and crops like grapes and stone fruits and other primary industries that rely on irrigation including the dairy industry, is very critical indeed.”
Mr Howard said it was too early to start trying to calculate the impact a continuation of the drought would have on economic growth.

“We know already that the drought has taken up to three-quarters to one per cent of our growth. The longer it goes on the harder the impact,” Mr Howard said.

“These are just stark facts. I’m not gilding the lilly. I wish I had another story. I would like to be talking optimistically about the drought, rather than relaying this kind of story.”

Mr Howard said there would be no irrigation for grapes and stone fruit crops if the drought continued and that there was no guarantee of carryover water.

He said the Commonwealth would consider further assistance for irrigators if insufficient rain fell, but could not detail that now.

“We already provide a large amount through EC, and we have liberalised EC,” Mr Howard said.

“They are in a difficult situation and the federal government will not let them down.

“We have to look at what is reasonable and what is appropriate, but I’m indicating that we will look (to see) if there are other things the federal government could do.”

He refused to comment on whether the measure would drive farmers off the land.

“It is serious, it will be another blow if it doesn’t rain, that’s self-evident.

“But I don’t want to start using these apocalyptic terms in a general fashion.”

Mr Howard said the dire predictions were further reason for Victoria to sign up to the federal government’s $10 billion water reform package for the Murray-Darling, announced in January.

The Bracks government is resisting pressure to sign the deal, despite the agreement of NSW, Queensland and South Australia, believing it does not represent a good outcome for the state.

Mr Howard said water was a national asset and needed to be treated as such.

“The $10 billion national water security plan is the very long-term planning this country needs,” he said.

“I say in the plainest possible terms to the premier of Victoria: it is time your state came onboard.

“It is time we stopped behaving like Victorians or Queenslanders or New South Welshmen, and that we saw the water assets of this country belonging to all Australians and not to different groups of Australians sheltering behind different state borders which are quite irrelevant when it comes to the water needs of this nation.”

Water Resources and Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said it was a matter for water utilities as to whether farmers would still be charged the fixed water allocation and licence fees.

He said NSW irrigation cooperatives were owned by the farmers.

In Victoria, water utilities are owned by the state government.

“They should look very carefully at the relief they can provide in respect of fixed charges,” he said.

Mr Turnbull said the only reasons the Murray had not stopped flowing on a number of occasions was because of dams built to maintain flows during dry periods.

“In pre-regulation days, before those dams and weirs were built, the Murray often ran dry,” he said.

“We are going through a hotter and drier period and it is important to remember that even though we have had average rainfalls in the first few months of this current year, because the ground is so dry and because the ground water systems have been so depleted, we have not seen the runoff into the streams.

“We need big rains to make a difference.”

Mr Turnbull said it had been feared there might be no water at all left in the major storages of the Dartmouth Reservoir and Hume Dam, but there were about 350 billion litres, largely because of lower evaporation from cooler temperatures.

He said this just underlined the need to use water efficiently.