Michael West’s Blog

Not that I care too much for Victorian politics but Steve Bracks has just quit politics after 8 years as Premier. Kudos to the ABC News site for being the first out with the news here. Bracks apparently cites personal reasons for his resignation, which probably includes his son’s recent drink driving adventure. I admire Bracks for recently sticking it to the Howard Government over control of the Murray-Darling Basin, particularly when it seems the that he and Malcolm Turnball were close to negotiating a solution, which the Prime Minister overruled just to score some political points. It seems the attempts at Federalism by Howard et al will leave them with egg on their face, even if the High Court was to uphold the Commonwealth’s position because it will leave no one with total control of water in the Basin. It will be divided between the States and the Commonwealth which is just as bad as it is now.

Anyway, good luck to Bracks in his new life outside the political sphere. I wonder how long until he is consulting for Macquaire Bank or similar, like another former Labor state Premier.

OK, so this blog isn’t intended to be solely about Canberra’s weather but it has been pretty interesting lately. We have had a lot of rain here in the past few days and as such Lake Burley Griffin is now full - mainly due to stormwater and other runoff from North Canberra. As such for the first time in 5 years there is talk of opening the floodgates on Scrivener Dam. At present 3 of the sluices are open and allowing flow into the Molonglo River. Word from Christina, who works for SunWater - they have responsiblity for Scrivener Dam - is that the people there are working around the clock monitoring the water levels in the lake and it seems that extra people will be sent to Canberra from the Brisbane office (where she is) to help out. Sadly, Christina is in a different division so won’t get to come down. Above is a photograph I took last night and below are some photos I took this morning on the way to work.

Last night I went to a talk by Malcolm Turnbull, the Federal Minister for the Environment & Water Resources, held by the Canberra Division of Engineers Australia. The talk was entitled “Vision and community expectations of engineers in relation to water, energy and environmental matters”. To be honest I was a little underwhelmed. It was obvious that Mr Turnbull is a very good orator and you would expect that from someone who was a very successful solicitor and businessman and now a politician - his bio is here. He was engaging and drew examples from a wide range of fields and epochs, including ancient Rome and the engineering endeavours of the Eqyptians. But for me the problem was the lack of content, he didn’t really talk about much that I (or the rest of the audience) weren’t aware of already. He basically just summarised the key environmental challenges facing Australia - water scarcity and climate change and stressed that engineers were crucial to tackling these problems. Sure… but in what way? What can we keep doing? What do we need to do better? What more does the community expect from us? Where are the skilled people and the other resources going to come from? I guess I was left with more questions, than insights into his view on the issues at hand.

To be fair, my attention was held completely for the 20-25 minutes that he spoke and he came across very measured and didn’t politicize the issues too much - which is unusual for a politician in an election year. Also, it was interesting to hear his views on how climate change should be addressed. Principally, he said the three main areas where real benefits can be made were…

1. Increased energy efficiency - whether in the home or industry, for example sustainable buildings, insultation, etc.
2. Forestry policy - interestingly reversing deforestation, in particular the destruction of rainforests in Brazil and Indonesia, can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 20%. Hence, the Federal Governments funding of forestry initatives in Indonesia recently.
3. Zero emission energy production - solar, nuclear, bio, wind, etc. Here Mr Turnbull harped on a bit about clean coal & CO2 sequestration which I think is a bit of a pipe dream and is touted so as not to put the coal industry offside etc.

Anyway, it was interesting hearing the Minister speak but it would have been nice if there was a bit more ‘meat’ to complement his well crafted words. I would be curious to hear what others think about the proposed three-pronged response to climate change outlined above.