Australian farmers faced deep cuts to irrigation water use under proposals unveiled yesterday to help drought-proof the country’s vast food bowl, a plan set to spark a new fight for Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s beleaguered Labor government.
After angry farmers last year staged protests and burned copies of a government water plan, officials released a new, scaled-back proposal to cut water use by 25 percent across the Murray-Darling river basin, an area the size of France and Spain that produces 90 percent of Australia’s fresh food.
The draft plan would restore the health of the Murray-Darling basin against climate change that is expected to bring more droughts similar to one which ravaged the country for more than a decade until 2009, Australian Environment Minister Tony Burke said.
However, Burke acknowledged many farmers and affected states would be unhappy.
“There will be arguments up and down the Basin. That’s why we’ve gone [the 110 years] since Federation without having sensible reform and getting this right,” Burke said.
Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent and climate scientists expect it to be hard hit by global warming. The devastating floods which finally broke the last drought earlier this year are thought by many scientists to be a sign of the increasing unpredictability of the country’s climate.
The independent Murray--Darling Basin Authority, which manages water over an area that is home to 3 million people across four states, said an extra 2,750 gigaliters of water a year — enough to fill Sydney Harbour six times over — had to be returned to rivers suffering from a century of neglect and over-use for irrigation.
A gigaliter is 1 billion liters — enough to fill 400 Olympic-size swimming pools.
The new water plan is a step down from the 3,000 gigaliters to 4,000 gigaliters a year cuts suggested in a previous draft last year.
The Murray-Darling basin is home to cotton and rice growers, 53 percent of grain cereals and 28 percent of Australia’s cattle herd, but is also home to thousands of fragile wetlands, including 16 wetlands of international importance.
The authority’s findings could set up a major fight for Gillard, whose minority government has been struggling in successive opinion polls suggesting it is likely to be swept from office at elections in two years.
While many of the affected farmers and communities already support opposition conservatives, Gillard secured support from Greens and two independent rural MPs for her Labor party by being sympathetic toward their often competing concerns.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
French singer Kendji Girac, who was seriously injured by a gunshot this week, wanted to “fake” his suicide to scare his partner who was threatening to leave him, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 27-year-old former winner of France’s version of The Voice was found wounded after police were called to a traveler camp in Biscarrosse on France’s southwestern coast. Girac told first responders he had accidentally shot himself while tinkering with a Colt .45 automatic pistol he had bought at a junk shop, a source said. On Thursday, regional prosecutor Olivier Janson said, citing the singer, that he wanted to “fake” his suicide
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other