Page 176 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2019
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issue that a lot of people are both very concerned about and taking great interest in. It is a critical issue for Australia, for our natural environment and for all the people and other species that rely on the Murray-Darling Basin’s ecosystem. Beyond that, it is an important issue for anyone who simply believes we have a duty to respect and protect the natural environment we live in.
The tragic environmental outcomes in the Murray-Darling Basin have been slowly unfolding for many years, but in recent weeks this has been put into focus by a series of traumatic photographs and videos highlighting some of the terrible outcomes: mass deaths of fish in the lower Darling in New South Wales, algal blooms deoxygenating the water and images of sheep and kangaroos stuck and dying in dried up mud as they desperately search for water. These images are hard to look at, but they paint the perfect picture of what environmental neglect looks like. This is what happens to our beautiful natural environment and our natural ecosystems when our leaders either fail in their efforts or simply do not care about the environment.
The Greens hold serious concerns over the health and future of our critical river system. There has been an ongoing series of negligence and compromises that has led us to this point. The issues with corporate irrigators taking more and more water from an already struggling environment must be addressed. The Murray-Darling is a natural ecosystem suffering because of human-made problems. Ultimately, of course, these human-made problems end up affecting humans as well: rivers have stopped flowing in north-west New South Wales, water supply is compromised, and some towns are even on severe water restrictions.
Many issues are facing the Murray-Darling Basin and they are quite complex. However, I want to spend some time highlighting one particular issue—that is, the important link between the health of the Murray-Darling-Basin and climate change. The Murray-Darling Basin, just like all of Australia’s critical natural environment, is influenced by and at risk from changes to the climate. This is not something our climate-change-denying federal government can bring itself to say. They might say there is a drought, but they would never say droughts are more frequent and severe as climate change worsens, but this is the unavoidable truth.
We can look at the significant weight of scientific evidence to validate that or, indeed, to the recent South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission report. In fact, the royal commission report contains an entire chapter on climate change. The commissioner, the eminent Bret Walker SC, is absolutely scathing of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s negligence when it comes to preparing for climate change.
I want to elaborate on this point further because it highlights how critical it is that governments, decision-makers, land managers and others are aware of climate change and take it into account in all of their decision-making. The CSIRO advised the Murray-Darling Basin Authority that it needed to consider the recent climate of the past 10 to 20 years and its climate change projections. This advice was ignored by the MDBA. The commissioner said this amounts to negligence and maladministration.
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