The Brumby government has got it wrong on water

The Brumby government has announced their strategy for coping with the now chronic water shortage due to Victoria's greatly reduced rainfall.

Rainfall in the state has reduced 75% over the last ten years, which far exceeds the worst case predictions by the CSIRO when they modeled the effects of climate change.

It is therefore appropriate that the Victorian government take fairly urgent action to address this very serious issue that now impacts all Victorians. The question is, have they got the right strategies in place?

The government's Water Plan, also labeled as “Our Water Our Future” details the following key initiatives:

1. A new desalination plant for Melbourne
2. Modernising Victoria’s Food Bowl irrigation system to capture lost water for farms, the environment and Melbourne
3. Expansion of Victoria’s Water Grid
   
4. Upgrading Melbourne’s Eastern Treatment Plant to provide over 100 GL of recycled water in 2012 and assessing a range of alternative uses of this water
5. Supporting new and existing water conservation programs for homes and industry.

While elements of this plan seem reasonable, the projects arising out of it to date are highly questionable.

The desalination plant

The proposed desalination plant at Wonthaggi is supposed to provide 150 gigalitres of water per year – enough for one third of Melbourne's consumption. However, this plant will require 90 megawatts of power to run. This translates to 1 terawatt hour per year (1,000 gigawatt hours).

The government has stated that they will source renewable energy for this, but there is significant risk that they won't be able to get enough.

Premier John Brumby stated on ABC Radio 774 on 26 June 2008 that the desalination plant would cost less to install and use less energy than installing domestic rainwater tanks with electric pumps. The information he based this claim on appears to be incorrect. Calculations on domestic pumps supplying one million households indicated that they would only consume 365 gigawatt hours per year, less than half the amount required to power the desalination plant.

More energy is also need to pump water from the desalination plant to Melbourne.

Stopping logging in Melbourne's water catchments would yield about another 30 gigalitres per year.

Modernising Victoria's irrigation system

This $750 million project is part of a government water strategy, which would also modernise infrastructure in the region to save 225 billion litres of water now lost through evaporation, seepage and system inefficiencies.

While replacing fixing leaks and water losses in irrigation infrastructure is a good thing, the Victorian government has announced a plan to pump water from the Goulburn River, which is in the water-deprived Murray Darling catchment, over the Great Dividing Range to Melbourne.

The two glaring problems with this are:

1. There is not enough water in the Goulburn River to take more out without critically endangering both the Goulburn and Murray Rivers.

2. The water taken out, estimated to be 75 gigalitres, will be pumped over the Great Dividing Range to Melbourne, which will result in more carbon emissions

Expansion of Victoria’s Water Grid

The concept behind “expanding the water grid” is to provide interconnections between river systems and storages across the state of Victoria.

The claimed benefits for this include:

• Increase the security of water supplies by diversifying the sources of water available for communities connected by the Grid

• Enable water to be traded more readily, by making it easier to transfer water to where it is most needed and valued

• Increase the value of supply options (current and future) by increasing the flexibility and diversity of uses.
• The expanded Victorian Water Grid will allow more water to be transferred between water systems.

However, around 10,000km of expensive new pipeline is required to create this network.

There are social equity issues with taking scarce water from rural areas to for Melbourne's domestic water supply.

Environmental flows have not been provided to the Yarra River which flows through Melbourne, contrary to scientific recommendations and a previous government commitment. This environmental flow should be provided to ensure the health of the river.

Carbon emissions are generated every time water pumped through a pipeline unless renewable energy is used for this.

Upgrading Melbourne’s Eastern Treatment Plant to provide over 100 GL of recycled water in 2012 and assessing a range of alternative uses of this water

This proposal is a good one. However, Melbourne produces around 320 GL of wastewater per year. Around 400ML per day is pumped out from Gunnamatta Beach outfall alone.

The government should set a higher target for recycling water of at least 200GL, and eliminate ocean outfalls.

Latrobe Valley power stations consume 140 billion litres (GL) of water per year, so recycled water could be used for this purpose rather than drinking water.

Supporting new and existing water conservation programs for homes and industry

This initiative is commendable. However, Melbourne's daily water usage is still quite high at 277 litres per person per day. A reduction to 150 litres per person per day is achievable, which would greatly reduce demand for water, and expensive new infrastructure to provide it.

Summary

The Brumby government has embarked on an expensive plan to address Victoria's water shortage, with a particular focus on ensuring Melbourne's water supply, with some severe impacts on rural areas resulting. In particular, the loss of water from the ailing Goulburn River, and the building of an energy hungry and polluting desalination plant at Wonthaggi will have major impacts to these regions.

The entire Murray Darling River is now at risk. Rather than taking more water from the Goulburn River, increased environmental flows should be provided to both the Goulburn and Murray rivers.

The $4.9b spending on these water projects will be passed onto Victorian taxpayers, with water bills increasing by about 15% already in 2008. It is projected that water prices will double by 2012 to pay for these projects.

Simple proven measures to increase water supply by protecting water catchments from logging are being ignored.

Melbourne's water supply needs would be better and more cheaply met by:

• reducing water consumption through increased efficiency measures

• stopping logging in water catchments

• major investment in domestic water tank systems, which have the added advantage of being installed incrementally

• harvesting, storing and using more of the 450 GL of storm water Melbourne loses per year

• recycling at least 200GL of sewerage per year and stopping ocean outfalls.

These initiatives can be funded from recurrent spending at cheaper rates (10%) than funds for giant projects such as the proposed $3b desalination plant (20%) under a Public Private Partnership.

The other worrying aspect of the government's water strategy is the apparent lack of supporting information on how their decisions were made, and grossly inadequate public consultation during its development.

The water strategy has been delivered as a fait accompli by government; they are not showing any signs of investigating lower risk and cheaper, more distributed alternatives.

Election strategy, political football and climate change

I bumped into Bob Hawke in Melbourne airport just after the 2004 federal election, and asked him what on earth happened with Mark Latham and Labor's strategy for the election. He replied that Latham had earlier sought advice from him and he told him that

“you need to take a lead position on your key strengths and you need to cover the key issues that your opponents will use against you”.

I consider this sage advice.

In 2004, Labor arguably ran on education (e.g. school funding) and health (e.g. Medicare Gold). The Howard governed countered them on education by running a scare campaign on funding for non-government schools being reduced (as per their “hit list”).

The environment has been a differentiator between Labor and the Liberals, but in 2004 Latham played a game of cat and mouse on forests with John Howard. Instead of taking a leadership position on forest protection and taking it up to Howard, Latham was lured into a trap which was deftly sprung when John Howard visited Tasmania and famously hugged members of the CFMEU in Hobart. Labor's Tony O'Connor of the CFMEU denounced Labor's forest policy in favour of John Howard's. While this did not actually cost Labor the election, it certainly did not help them much.

Interestingly, Hawke also pointed out that one of Howard's former key strengths – national security – was effectively neutralised as a campaign issue for him when the “43 eminent people” including retired defence chiefs, diplomats and former senior bureaucrats strongly criticised Howard for deceiving the Australian people over the Iraq war and pointing out that Australia had not become a safer place as a result of the war. However, Labor was not able to capitalise on this, although they did ask a series of questions in Parliament on this topic. See PM shrugs off foreign policy attack for more information on this.

Howard also effectively attacked Labor's economic credentials by running a scare campaign that interest rates would rise under Labor, which Latham was not really able to counter in the public mind despite signing a dubious guarantee that interest rates would not rise under a Labor government .

Latham's earlier wins on policy issues like books for children in schools and reducing parliamentarians superannuation disappeared in the cut and thrust of the campaign and the ensuing media storm.

So what will the strategies for the major parties be for the 2007 Federal election? Here is my take on it.

Labor will run on:

Education

• Increase funding and boost the ailing public education system.
• Position Labor as the “education experts”
• Point out that investing in education is an investment in the future
• In Rudd's budget reply, he has announced significant funding for new technical education, which could enjoy popular support.

Workplace relations

• Campaign on the issue that worker entitlements have been lost via Australian Workplace Agreements and the Howard Government's Work Choices reforms.
• Labor has committed to removing AWAs

Climate change and the environment

• Position themselves as better than Howard on climate change by ratifying the Kyoto agreement and setting targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions.
• Keep the CFMEU and coal miners happy by committing to grubby coal funding.
• Tread carefully on Tasmanian, Victorian and NSW forest protection to avoid a repeat performance of 2004. Tony O'Connor and Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon have already fired warning shots on this issue.

Infrastructure and long term planning

• Rudd has announced a policy for improving extending the speed and coverage of broadband across Australia to boost Australia's capabilities to use the Internet for competitive advantage.

Labor will seek to mitigate Liberal attacks on:

• Economic management credentials, including keeping interest rates low and running a budget surplus
• Being controlled by the unions and compromising Australia's productivity
• Endangering the economy and our standard of living by reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• Rudd's inexperience compared to Howard

The Liberals will run on:

The economy

• Claim credit for Australia enjoying prosperous times, low unemployment and a healthy economy (even though the minerals boom has been a major contributing factor to this)
• Continuing to run a budget surplus
• Reduce taxation to keep the electorate happy with more money in their pocket
• Position themselves as the only party capable of continuing to run a healthy economy

Education

• Howard has already taken it up to Rudd with the announcement a funding boost for universities with a new $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund, which will initially produce $300 million to $400 million annually for capital works and research facilities.

The environment

• Climate change. $741 million over five years on climate change has been announced, including funding for solar panel rebates, and deductions for the cost of establishing carbon sink forests. There is speculation that Howard will introduce an emissions trading scheme closer to the election date to strengthen their position on climate change
• Water tanks - $200 million over six years to support installing water tanks and other water-saving devices by schools and community organisations.
• Nuclear power and grubby coal. Howard is positioning both nuclear power and grubby coal (referred to by him with the oxymoron of “clean coal”) as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He is on dangerous ground here as neither will address long term energy sustainability, and neither will not be available in time for the immediate reductions we require.

Other items significant for the election in Costello's budget include:

• The aged. Immediate bonuses for about 85 per cent of people over 65, bonuses for carers
• Low -income earners. An extra $1.1 billion paid into the superannuation accounts of low-income earners.
• Child care. Changes include increasing the child-care benefit and fast-tracking the child-care tax rebate
• Defence. An additional $2.1 billion over 10 years to improve recruitment and retention of personnel.
• Road and rail. New budget funding for roads and rail of $22.3 billion over five years.

The Liberals will seek to mitigate Labor attacks on:

• Howard's ongoing commitment to the failed Iraq war, and his reluctance to reveal an exit strategy
• Recent interest rates rises
• A reduction in the growth of productivity
• Australian workers not getting “a fair go” due to Howard's workplaces reforms and AWAs
• The Howard government's lack of real action on climate change, despite growing public concern on this issue. Australia also appears as a pariah nation on climate change, constantly seeking to avoid commitments to setting emission reduction targets, criticising the Kyoto Agreement and failing to ratify it.
• The increased cost of housing – pushing affordabilty beyond the means of most first home buyers

Where I think both major parties will fail:

• Setting the aggressive targets and policies to address climate change. In particular, both major parties will avoid setting strong immediate targets and strong targets for 2020. Both will attempt to buy time on this, and maintain that they are taking appropriate action.
  

• Protection of remain high conservation value forests, including old growth forests not currently protected. The Liberals favour large companies continuing to plunder our forest, even though forest destruction contributes to climate change and loss of water. Labor is locked into a militant CFMEU (Union) position of logging jobs rather than forest protection - even though the logging jobs will go once the remaining forests are destroyed.
  

• Funding for a national high speed rail network similar to that operating in Europe in Japan. This is in the "too hard basket" for both Labor and Liberal who support spending vast amounts of money on the road system instead. This is in spite of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee report of February 2007 that states trains use about one third the fuel of trucks per net tonne kilometre.
  

• Funding for cycling transport infrastructure to make it safer and more convenient in both urban and rural areas. Again, this is in the "too hard basket" as multi billion dollar toll roads such as Melbourne's Eastlink are being constructed.
  

• Putting in place effective policies for reducing power consumption and the reducing the requirement for base load electricity.

• Setting an exit strategy for coal burning and exports. The Liberals are addicted to the revenue for coal exports, and Labor is protecting coal miners jobs. But we got of whaling didn't we?
  

So what about the Greens?

This is topic for a separate posting. Some of the above points where major parties may fail could be addressed by them. They will be under strident attack from both Labor and The Liberals who are not keen to lose any votes to newcomers or to share the balance of power with other parties.

Will the Greens be able to counter attacks by the major parties and consolidate growing public support for many of their core policies which have now become mainstream? Or will they be marginalised and characterised again as “extreme”? Will Labor and Liberal really take action on climate change, or will they succeed in just greenwashing themselves?

Stay tuned.