Comments on: Steve Bracks Quits as Vic Premier

by: Jon

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:11:01 +0000

I don’t think the water plan was timed to hide anything. It was very much an appropriate response to the ongoing drought crisis, which has not gone away. Sometimes even John Howard does the right thing for the right reasons!

While the state politicians fiddle, the salinity in the Murray increases. At Morgan (where Adelaide gets its water from) the alinity has doubled in recent months.

by: michael

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:31:38 +0000

You are right. It cuts both ways. I agree that a unified plan for the management of the MDB is the way to go. The thing that irritates me is that Bracks and Turnbull were very close to reaching an agreement, and then Howard comes in over the top of Turnbull, undoing all the good work from those negotiations and issuing Victoria with an ultimatum and insisting they agree to the legislation proposed originally (and not that which resulted from the negotiations between Bracks and Turnbull).

I’m also a bit cynical about the timing. I wonder what piece of bad news the government was trying to hide. I think back to the announcement about the national emergency in indigenous communities which happened on the same day that a very damming report was released about how maintenance failures in Defence led to the SeaHawk crash in Nias.

by: Jon

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:19:01 +0000

It’s probably a good thing. Bracks’ politicing over the water plan had brought the most important development in management of the Murray Darling Basin in the past 100 years to the brink of collapse.
Even the Victorian Farmer’s Federation have changed their tune, saying they now think the plan is a good thing. So hopefully now the unified management of the MDB can now go ahead without high court challenges and other messy delays.