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what was with all the Boo's?
what was with all the Boo's?
They all seemed to be directed at the MP, Premier of the state of Victoria. It seems he isn't well liked, that's what would probably happen if you had Gordon Brown giving out the winners trophy at Silverstone.
what was with all the Boo's?
Brumby's water plan savaged
MELISSA FYFE
March 28, 2010
JOHN Brumby's multibillion-dollar plan to save water in northern Victoria and boost Melbourne's supply has been rubbished by Australia's top economists and water experts.
They say that the project is based on ''spurious'' claims and will result in the waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money.
The government's controversial Foodbowl Modernisation Project is already pushing water bills higher and will drain a further $1.6 billion from state and federal coffers. But experts say taxpayers are forking out four times the money necessary to provide more water for the city and the environment.
''At the end of the day we will all pay because we will have fewer hospitals and fewer schools and a whole heap of irrigation infrastructure that will sit there like a giant white elephant,'' said La Trobe University water expert Professor Lin Crase.
Alistair Watson, one of Australia's most respected agricultural experts, said fellow economists were now calling the project ''the northern dog''.
The project, personally championed by Mr Brumby since he was treasurer as a historic opportunity to deliver more water for regional Victoria, Melbourne and the environment, will modernise the Goulburn-Murray's irrigation infrastructure by replacing old meters and lining channels.
The $1 billion first stage, expected to be finished by 2014, will deliver 225 billion litres in ''saved'' water, divided equally between irrigators, Melbourne and the environment. Melbourne's 75 billion litres will come down the already-completed $750 million north-south pipeline, which, since last month, has delivered water to the city from older rural water-saving projects and environmental reserves. Stage two, costing another $1 billion, will be funded by Commonwealth taxpayers, with 100 billion litres of water savings going to the environment and 100 billion litres to irrigators.
The damning criticism of the project comes as a government source familiar with the business case for stage two told The Sunday Age that the Victorian government had exaggerated how much more productive farmers will be under a better irrigation system, and that the productivity figures were ''not credible''.
The business case for stage two is now before the federal government, which is assessing the taxpayer value of the project. It is due to make a decision soon. The source, who declined to be named, described the project as a ''scandalous waste of billions of dollars''.
The project began in 2007 but it was only last month that the government released its business case for the first stage. It said that, over the next 20 years, the project's benefits will be twice as valuable as its $1 billion price tag. The Sunday Age asked a panel of 10 top public policy economists, water experts and agricultural economists to assess the claim.
The experts included some of the nation's leading economists, such as the University of Melbourne's John Freebairn, who said the money should be spent on other regional projects, and the University of Queensland's John Quiggin, who said the project did not ''stack up'' for the taxpayer and political pressure against going into the water market had forced the Victorian government to find ''high-cost solutions'' to Melbourne's water crisis.
The experts also included Oliver Gyles, a foodbowl irrigator who worked for the Victorian government as a senior economist for 14 years. He said the water savings did not appear possible.
The government declined to suggest an independent expert who would publicly back the project.
With the exception of one, the experts slammed the project, broadly echoing the Productivity Commission's December draft report into recovering water in the Murray-Darling basin.
This report found that the Foodbowl Modernisation Project ''seems to be at odds with due diligence requirements'' because taxpayers would be paying $10,000 for every million litres for Melbourne and the environment, instead of $2500 that federal Water Minister Penny Wong is paying for water from farmers who are willing to sell. This compares to $3300 per million litres for widespread retrofitting of rainwater tanks and up to $3230 for desalination water.
The experts said a cheaper solution to Melbourne's water crisis would be to forget expensive irrigation upgrades and instead buy the water from willing farmers in the north - although this is politically controversial - and deliver it through the north-south pipeline. They also say the economics of the pipeline will make little sense when less expensive desalination plant water comes online.
One of the economists, Professor Quentin Grafton, director of the Australian National University's Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, raised concerns about the business case. He said the bottom-line figures presented could not be properly evaluated, that they must be taken on ''trust''.
Monash University economist Glyn Wittwer, who was contracted by government consultants to model the economic benefit of the construction and maintenance phase in stage one, said the business case was confusing. He had estimated the project's construction value to be worth an extra $381 million to the Victorian economy to 2020, but the business case, he said, had inexplicably added another $624 million.
The panel of experts also attacked Mr Brumby's claim that the project is about ''creating new water'' and that large amounts of water are now ''lost''. Mr Brumby has often compared the irrigation district to a 44-gallon drum. ''The top half of it is punched full of holes; every time you fill it, it'll go empty, it'll go down to half-full, and that's exactly the position in the Goulburn-Murray system.''
But the experts said there were few real ''losses'' in over-allocated districts, such as Victoria's Murray basin areas.
Water flows off farms into drains, which are used by other farmers, or water leaks into soil through channels then travels underground in aquifers and is pumped out by farmers downstream or used by the river and wetlands as environmental flows.
Professor Crase described the government's claim of creating ''new'' water as ''spurious in the extreme''. ''When water is purportedly 'lost' in the irrigation district, it does not go to Mars. It is not lost at all, it has just gone somewhere else.''
Visiting fellow at the Australian National University, Donna Brennan, said: ''The benefits to the environment would need to be seriously questioned. Some of the water 'leaking' was actually returning to the system and ending up further down the river.''
The experts added that taxpayers should not be subsidising irrigation infrastructure - that if it was a good investment, irrigators would have committed the money themselves (they are contributing $100 million of the $2 billion cost).
The University of Adelaide's Professor Mike Young said it was likely that some Victorian irrigation districts that missed out on the government subsidy would be sent to the wall.
Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding refused to answer questions from The Sunday Age, including where the water losses from inefficient irrigation were currently going and whether the government compared the foodbowl project to the cost of other options for boosting Melbourne's water supplies.
In a statement, Mr Holding said: "It is obvious that if the Victorian government just wanted water for Melbourne or for the environment we could have just bought it off irrigators and let farming die in Victoria.
''Superficially, this may have looked like cheap water, but in truth it would have come at a catastrophic cost. I believe the people of Melbourne and all Victorian taxpayers are proud to help fund a project that will secure our foodbowl, boost exports and create jobs in the decades ahead."
Respected water expert John Langford, an engineer from the universities of Melbourne and Monash, was positive about the project because he said it provided better service delivery for irrigators. The key benefit, he said, was not water savings. Asked why Victorian taxpayers and higher water bills should pay for better service for irrigators, Professor Langford agreed Melburnians were paying a premium for the annual 75 billion litres in water savings coming down the north-south pipeline. But the government probably thought it was a good insurance policy for the city while the desalination plant was finished, he said.
Shepparton irrigator and businessman John Corboy defended the use of taxpayers' money on irrigation upgrades - likening it to government support for the car industry or freeway infrastructure for cities. He said the Goulburn-Murray irrigation community could not pay for its own infrastructure because of the long drought, low food prices, free trade and global market pressures
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/brumb ... -r4dh.html
Rudd turns up heat on Brumby
MICHELLE GRATTAN
March 29, 2010
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd will increase the pressure on Premier John Brumby to accept the national hospital plan by highlighting today that it would mean Victoria had an extra $3.8 billion to invest in economic infrastructure over the rest of the decade.
This is because the Commonwealth would take on more funding responsibility for the health and hospitals system.
Acceptance of the plan, under which Canberra would fund 60 per cent of the hospitals system, would mean the states in total had an extra $15 billion for economic infrastructure over the remainder of the decade, Mr Rudd will tell the Australian Davos Connection cities summit in Melbourne. News South Wales' share would be $4.9 billion.
A senior Liberal backbencher has rejected Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's confrontationist attitude to Mr Rudd's plan, calling on him to adopt a bipartisan stand.
Mal Washer, a medical doctor, told The Age the Liberals should try to improve on the plan rather than reject it.
In today's address, Mr Rudd will stress the importance of health and hospitals reform in maximising workforce participation as the population ages.
Tackling chronic disease through an integrated policy will be critical to making sure as many people as possible are able to contribute to the economy, he will say. Efforts to reduce chronic disease could mean another 175,000 people in the workforce by 2030.
Linking the national hospitals plan to improving long-term public finance, Mr Rudd will say that under ''business as usual'', states will not be able to invest properly in their wider economic infrastructure, as the lion's share of their budgets will be consumed by health.
Dr Washer said the thrust of the Rudd plan was sound. ''The concept of more federal funding into health is a good one. People want us to have more of a role.
''My advice to Tony would be 'let's look to the positives of this and see if we can value-add'.''
He said the devil was in the detail, such as the mechanisms for accountability, but the opposition should be ''as bipartisan as possible'' on hospitals.
Mr Abbott has condemned the plan but has not yet put out an alternative except to say he would insist hospital boards be set up in NSW and Queensland. He has said the Opposition has been looking at how to get 3500 extra beds into the system.
Dr Washer, a West Australian, said the WA Liberal government should sign up to the Rudd plan, as should the Brumby government, which has been the strongest critic.
Mr Rudd, in Broken Hill yesterday to visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the local hospital, said: ''I would really appeal to Mr Abbott to get on board for better health and better hospital services for all Australians.''
He said Mr Abbott had been offered an immediate technical briefing on the reform plan. ''That offer has been with him for some time. I would urge him to take up that offer tomorrow.
''People are sick and tired of politicians pointing fingers at each other on the question of health and hospitals. People have had a gutful of the finger-pointing - they want all of us to point to a direction ahead to change the system for the better.''
Health Minister Nicola Roxon hit back at Victoria. ''Mr Brumby and the Health Minister might be overstating things if they think everything is perfect,'' she said. ''Victoria doesn't rank the highest on a whole lot of indicators for hospitals.''
There were lots of issues to be worked through but ''you can see some of them as a bit of an ambit claim''. Victoria is demanding $1 billion extra a year.
Ms Roxon will announce today $4.9 million in healthy community grants to tackle obesity, including $410,000 to expand walking groups and community kitchen work in Victoria's central goldfields area and $410,000 for Hume City Council projects in the north-west of Melbourne.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/rudd- ... -r55k.html
I didn't boo him but I'm not Victorian.
I didn't boo him but I'm not Victorian.
I didn't boo him but I'm not Victorian.
I should hope you were too busy cheering the highly important first win of the Button/McLaren partnership
Must admit, I got a bit teary eyed come the Podium, just like Aus/Brazil (Not the Podium in the latter case, Parc Ferme) last year.
I didn't boo him but I'm not Victorian.
I should hope you were too busy cheering the highly important first win of the Button/McLaren partnership
Must admit, I got a bit teary eyed come the Podium, just like Aus/Brazil (Not the Podium in the latter case, Parc Ferme) last year.
well I was sitting at the first corner so ran to the podium to get a good spot! Will post pics when I get home
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