GETTING THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN AUTHORITY’S INFORMATION–HERE IS WHERE TO GO.

What a good friend is Anonymous! S/he has written this morning to ensure that this blog knew where the documents were that have informed the decision-making of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and backgrounded The Guide to the proposed Murray-Darling Basin plan.  The documents can be accessed at the site

BP-KID at http://thebasinplan.mdba.gov.au/bpkid/.

Please note the prominence I have given the site name and URL.  Don't want Networkers complaining that they couldn't see it. (Smile!)
Now Anonymous explains as follows:

You can currently access

over 1500 reports/documents/references

MDBA has used on this website.

Over on The Drum Unleashed to-day, David Merrylees in his post Hell or High Water says:

Although we were told that best available science was used to determine environmental requirements, the scientific papers are not available for review and won’t be released until the end of October, or sometime after that, knowing the ability of the MDBA t stick to a timetable. 

I liked David’s post.  It is an excellent first person account of life at the coal-face or should I say the channel-face? 

I will try to get in touch with David to give him this information directly and I hope the information he seeks is there.  The MDBA promised the information and I think this is it.  As well, the ‘best available science’ is unlikely to be an exaggeration by the MDBA if one looks at the references and acknowledgments in the back of The Guide.  They are substantial and reputable.  This doesn’t stop issues within the papers being argued.  This is how science works - through debate, further investigation and experimental replication and modelling.
I have a query which I would put to the MDBA.
 
If COAG is currently so involved in the water policies of this nation, and details on water allocations cannot be given by the MDBA because - the MDBA says - this is the province of state Water Resource departments, then why could the states and their relevant departments not have been co-opted into the MDBA process to assist with research and investigation so that ready answers (even though they may have necessarily been inexact) could have been provided at the Community Engagements?


I have a few further comments to make at this juncture:

• This is the largest, most widespread and significant structural adjustment since white settlement in this country.
• What the MDBA has had to do and yet to do has never been done before by any nation in the world.  The nearest things that I can think of is Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and pictures of agricultural extension officers going into the dustbowl that was Texas comes to mind or perhaps efforts to stamp out BSE in Britain.
• The MDBA members, like it or lump it, are human beings with all that this entails – shortcomings; difficulties in communication; not being able to cover all the bases in all the detail demanded.
• Get angry, put up a fight if that is felt necessary but let that not be the whole story.  There has to be a time to sit down, plainly speak, and come to grips with all that is being said and all that is there to be understood.
• So much pain has been suffered already yet the land and water scapes of this nation testify to our fallibility in the care of our country. The drought-breaking rain has given us a chance to get our breath back and recover from physical exhaustion and the psychical exhaustion of fighting off the banks and keeping backs from flattening against walls. Let us not waste that pain when we may be within coo-eee of beneficial solutions.  Taking the cancer patient off the chemo when the program is only half-way through is not the best idea in the world.  Let’s not waste the pain that has been suffered.  Let’s get world’s best practice solutions to the Basin problems.
• As of yesterday, the patient has a chance to get what is the equivalent of a second opinion.  I reckon Windsor is wise and wily and, if he is given enough room to move, he just might pull a reasonable outcome off….in conjunction with all other players.

Let’s bear all this mind and get constructive.  Our nation and its future generations are worthy of nothing less.

BTW, I am sure Networkers will let me know if the details given by Anonymous are not working for them.
Networkers, see post above.
Denis from The Nature Of Robertson
has had a go and it worked a treat.
He wrote me a letter and 
attached the Excel file he downloaded.
Have published his letter as he sent it
complete with the file which you can open
from the post.
Happy hunting!