Last drink for the Vales

by PHILIP WHITE - This was published in The Independent Weekly in February 2008

THE politics of drought are set to ravage McLaren Vale – a world leader in viticultural water conservation.

Vignerons are reeling from Water Security Minister Karlene Maywald’s shock announcement that mains water allocations have been slashed 35% from February 1^st.

“We’ll lose between 350 and 500 hectares of Australia’s most valuable vineyards”, said Derek Cameron, chairman of the McLaren Vale Growers’ Council. “That’s well over $60,000,000 loss in five years.

“The real insult is that this is being inflicted on Australia’s most efficient and productive irrigating vignerons” he said. “All our mains water is from our Myponga catchment – we use no Murray water. We have no channel irrigation; no sprinklers – everything’s on highly efficient drip with the most advanced monitoring systems available. And because we waste no water, and irrigation is absolutely minimal, a cut of one third is disastrous.”

Mr Cameron explained that his growers fully appreciated the value of water. They’d happily paid the $1160 per ML going rate, and had perhaps naively supposed the imposed hike to $1650 next July would involve some surety of supply.

“Murray growers pay from $75 to $400 per ML”, Mr. Cameron said. “They yield between $1100 and $2500 income per ML applied. If they paid mains rates they’d run at a loss. We average $13,660 to $17,000 income per ML. We’re sustainable.”

In a scenario eerily akin to Labor’s disastrous ’80s Vine Pull Scheme, the cuts will destroy smaller, super-premium McLaren Vale growers, many organic, who supply international figureheads like Grange, Eileen Hardy, and Dead Arm, while broadacre chemical regime irrigators of cheap bulk industrial fruit survive.

“At least that Vine Pull was voluntary”, Mr. Cameron said. “95% of those to go this time will be profitable family-owned vineyards smaller than 40 acres … people who’ve struggled through five years of drought and low payments, without the wherewithal to connect to the recycled system.”

Jock Harvey, chairman of McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism, said the cuts showed a frightening lack of government understanding of McLaren Vale.

“We’re 80% of the way through a 22 year plan to totally drought-proof our district”, he said. “By 2012, we will be the first premium grape region in the world to be economically and ecologically sustainable in this way. So this is devastating. Imposing this on such marginal electorates is political suicide.”

McLaren Vale growers have instituted and paid for the oldest and most successful underground water management system in the state, recharging their aquifer by at least 2000ML per year. They have funded the largest network of reclaimed water use in Australia, providing 40% of irrigation demands with recycled water from the southern suburbs.

Intensive work with local State MP Leon Bignall last year saw both state and federal governments allocate funds to assist more small growers switch from mains water to the recycled network. The immediate construction of a winter storage dam would reduce the flow of Christie’s Beach effluent into the Gulf, and reroute 1000ML of mains irrigation back into Adelaide’s drinking supply by 2012.

“This plan we’d engineered with Leon – who’s been a big help - would have reduced mains water irrigators by 80% within four years”, Mr. Cameron said. “We’d be back to 95% in five years. To destroy these irreplaceable heritage vineyards when they’re finally about to switch completely to recycled water just doesn’t make sense.”

“I understand there’s only so much water in the bucket”, said Leon Bignall. “But this is disastrous for the south. We’ve lost Mitsubishi. Now McLaren Vale. We’re meeting Karlene on Wednesday to get this fixed. These growers deserve acknowledgement and reward, not punishment. Unlike the overhead sprinkler regime up the River, these blokes are world leaders in water conservation.”

Labor suicides by water-boarding

by PHILIP WHITE - This was published in The Independent Weekly in July 2008

It was politicians who put the soldier settlers up the River. Poor buggers would just get back from the battles and horrors they’d never forget and they’d send ’em straight up the river with a shovel, a bundle of cuttings and an irrigation permit. Mine the Mallee for sugar; turn the water into wine, export it at the price of Coca Cola. Since then, until now, nobody’s had a second thought about the River. Anybody’d think the Chaffey Brothers still ran the entire basin.

Kevin Rudd certainly isn’t running it. COAG isn’t running it. Mike Rann’s not running it. Karlene and Penny aren’t in the race. Jock Harvey might just as well run it. He’s the chair of the McLaren Vale Grape, Wine and Tourism Association.

Having just left a meeting with the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, The Hon Tony Burke MP, Jock had a big spray, like most of the rest us did, anywhere we could, after the COAG collapse.

“There widespread support for the Federal Government taking control of the entire Murray River system through the compulsory acquisition of all water entitlements and then re-allocating water on a sustainable basis similar to the approach advocated by the Wentworth Group and scientist Mike Young”, was Jock’s first salvo.

Then it just kept coming:

“We are specifically concerned that instead of acquiring water entitlements, investing in infrastructure and efficiencies upstream will ultimately result in expanded plantings upstream and less or no water in the river downstream”, he said.

“The imminent collapse of the Murray River system is a national emergency requiring immediate federal government action”, he said.

“The Coorong is designated as a World Heritage Area because of its importance to the world’s ecology, not just the ecology of SA”, he continued.

“As the southern reaches of the Murray River system die, so to will the Coorong. As one of the richest countries in the world, how Australia solves this crisis will have a dramatic impact on SA and Australia’s standing in the world community, and on our leverage in making and keeping international commitments.

“The Government has the power to take these actions under the Corporations Act and we believe they must act now', he concluded.

Former Labor Party Senator Chris Schacht was at the meeting too. He should be running the River. He’s smart enough to warn that “every Federal Labor seat in South Australia except one was vulnerable to falling at the next election if the federal Government did not take immediate steps to take complete control of the river system”.

Paul Clancy, Chairman of the Wine Grape Council, should be running it. He’s ballistic about the amount of new vineyard planting still underway, in the face of gross oversupply and dwindling water resources.

“These damned Managed Investment Scheme plantings are continuing apace!”, he said last week. “200 plus new acres at Loxton. 200 plus at Lake Cullulleraine. 1200 plus in the Barossa. 200 plus at Wentworth. 200 plus at Ballarat. That’s only the start. Where’s the water coming from?

“This drought and the irrigation restrictions are simply masking the massive over-supply of grapes”, he said. “This industry needs 1.6 million tonnes of grapes to meet current demand and projected growth. We grew 2.1 million tonnes in 2006 and the prices collapsed. How much water will be wasted growing another 500,000 plus tonnes of grapes we can’t sell?

“There is, pure and simple, no potential for the industry to absorb this over-supply. The whole world is awash with oversupply, and the exchange rate is dead against Australia selling into that full market. Industry and government can no longer turn their backs on the grounds that this is free enterprise at work and that market forces will address this problem.”

While the big companies are still urging further plantings, they admit there’s a big glut of chardonnay: big enough for the price of those grapes to fall to $300 a tonne. So what’s the new deal? Now they want people to plant pinot noir and pinot gris because they’re the new buzz words. Apart from a tiny proportion of the Adelaide Hills and the Southern Fleurieu, there is no land in South Australia suitable for these difficult cool climate wine types.

Calling for mass plantings of such varieties, as Foster’s seems to desire, is about as dumb as taking fresh water from Tailem Bend and piping it to Langhorne Creek. Given one full day of stiff sou-easterly, the brine and sulphuric acid waters of the lakes will be well beyond Wellington and slurping neatly into the intake of the new pipe. Another twenty four hours of wind and the lakes shandy will reach Murray Bridge, where the Mount Bold pipe does its slurping. Another day of wind will see the same poisonous muck entering the intake of the Mannum Adelaide pipe. Duh!