The live cattle debacle, the QANTAS fiasco and now for the final segment of Labor management, the draft of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Labor would be incapable of boiling an egg without the requirement for the issuance of a safety warning beforehand.
It has been revealed today that the government is changing the rules in the middle of the game for the people who live in the Basin.
The Weekly Times reveals that the government has retrospectively changed how it measures how much water has been bought back from the system.* These “exchange rates” convert the potential water entitlement to the actual water that is allocated on average over time.
So for example, Murrumbidgee high security water has been allocated 100 per cent of its entitlement every year except one, so it has an exchange rate of 95 per cent. But under the government’s new plan, Murrumbidgee licences will only be converted at a rate of 83.5 per cent.
In effect, more water will need to be bought back for the same environmental target.
The race used to be 100 feet, the government now says it will be 100 metres.
Worse, they have done this without any consultation with the people who actually own the licences and the communities that will be hit by this decision. It’s not just Alan Joyce who misses out on a phone call from this government.
A year ago, when the Guide to the draft Plan descended into a fiasco, the government promised that it would listen to Basin communities and involve them in the process.
Instead they are leaking figures, changing the rules overnight and not even fully committing to proper public consultation. If they are going to leave people in the dark then don’t be surprised when they don’t see the light.
Just their presence in any process seems to have the capacity to summon disaster in the most eminent form from the darkest corners. The 2.1 million people living in the Basin are just about down to the knuckles on their first finger because they know that the next chapter in this very grim fairytale is them.
*http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2011/11/02/401931_latest-news.html