TOWARDS A PROFESSIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE FOR QUEENSLAND

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Email sent 10 June 2007

Mr Ken Smith,
Coordinator-General and Director-General,
Department of Infrastructure

Understanding Water Supplies in SEQ

A recent publication circulated by your Department, Water for the Future, argued that Queensland is experiencing the worst drought in more than 100 years. It included the attached diagram to make this point, and at face value this implies that unforeseeable drought is the major cause of SE Queensland's water supply crisis.

However, others observers have offered different explanations, some of which which I have outlined in Structural Incompetence and SE Queensland's Water Crisis.

In particular, it has been suggested that SE Queensland's catchments (Wivenhoe in particular) are subject to very infrequent but large water inflows, with low inflows at other times sometimes for long periods. This hypothesis implies that:

• the current series of years with low inflows would not be unique and should have been anticipated. If so, institutional incompetence is part of the cause of SE Queensland's current crisis; and
• the diagram your Department presented might give a false impression of the situation, as it shows high past inflows averaged over long periods that potentially conceal this problem (ie infrequent large inflows and many years of low inflows).

I would appreciate clarification of the facts of the matter, as this has serious implications for public confidence in the institutions that have been responsible for water supply management in Queensland.

Regards

John Craig

I refer to your representations to the former Director-General of the Department of Infrastructure, Mr Ken Smith, about the Water for the Future publication released by the Department of Infrastructure. I have been asked to respond to you on his behalf.

Director
Corporate Policy and Governance

Email sent 11/12/07

Mr Greg Oliver,
Director,
Corporate Policy and Governance,
Queensland Water Commission

Responsibility for SE Queensland's Water Crisis

I refer to your recent reply to my July 2007 inquiry about an document released some time ago by the Department of Infrastructure which had seemed to give a misleading impression of the cause of SE Queensland's water crisis. It contained a diagram giving the impression that the recent drought was unprecedented, and thus unpredictable. It was misleading because it had concealed the fact that the region's major catchments seem to rely on irregular very large inflows with long periods of low inflows in between - so that there would regularly be long periods (such as the present) where average flows over many years were much lower than the long term average.

I note that your response stated that the recent drought was the worst on record. I also note that the diagram which you provided to 'prove' this clearly supported the point I was making (ie that the multi-year gaps between large inflows to those catchments meant that something like the current drought should have been professionally predictable).

An aside: added later and perhaps irrelevant - an observer, who wondered whether he was being paranoid, noted that the latter year-by-year diagram went back only as far as 1895 and thus excluded the 1893 floods. This reduced the perceived 'lumpiness' of water inflows. However the Infrastructure Department's published diagram, which was designed to show how a high earlier average had now decreased, went back to 1889 and thus included the 1893 flood.

I note that an earlier reply that I had received from the now-Premier's chief policy advisor in relation to a Senate inquiry into SE Queensland's water supplies (see Structural Incompetence and SE Queensland's Water Crisis) had also argued that the current drought was the worst on record. But to 'prove' this she had quoted a source which explicitly stated that a drought occurring in the late 1890s and early 1900's had shown similar severity - hardly a very convincing argument.

Thus there is no doubt that a lack of professional competence in the institutions responsible for Queensland water supplies has been a significant factor in the region's current crisis - just as I had suggested in my submission to the Senate inquiry.

Regards

John Craig