Cubbie’s unknown harvest

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it

Be fair: Farm groups are disappointed with the decision to lift a ban on floodplain harvesting and the pumping of water from the river by the NSW Government. Picture: Jenny Evans/Getty Images

THERE’S a million-megalitre flood pouring down Queensland’s Balonne-Condamine river system.

But don’t expect much of it to make it down the Darling River to reach the Menindee Lakes.

In Northern NSW another big surge is also making its way down the Border, Gwydir and Namoi rivers.

But again embargoes on pumping, to protect the first flush of water for the environment, have been lifted, allowing drought-starved irrigators to fill their dams.

The NSW Government has warned it expects just 170,000ML to reach the Menindee Lakes

Forget about it reaching Wentworth, where it could have boosted NSW, Victorian and South Australian Murray irrigators.

So why is so little water making its way south?

As Cubbie Agriculture chief executive Paul Brindlecombe says “(we’re) absolutely within our rights” to capture these floodwaters”.

Cubbie is just one of many irrigators in the northern basin who are simply exercising their floodplain harvesting rights.

None of us really know how much they’re harvesting.

As the Productivity Commission reported in December 2018, just 29 per cent of the northern basin’s take is metered. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Yet what’s being done to address this most fundamental problem? Sadly, bugger all.

Meanwhile NSW and Queensland Governments produce yet more reports and resource management plans, the MDB Authority ticks its boxes on compliance and the Federal Government waves its magic wand across the lot, declaring all is well.

It’s not.