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Howard committed to nuclear despite poll
Tuesday Nov 7 18:34 AEDT

Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed a poll which shows only 17 per cent
of Australians back nuclear power while almost half think solar power is the
best way to tackle climate change.

Mr Howard, who has been promoting a nuclear energy industry for Australia,
derided solar power as a soft answer which would never be able to replace
coal-fired electricity.

He said he would not back away from his support for nuclear power because of
one opinion poll.

"This is going to be a long debate, but I am going to continue to argue
reason. I can't have a policy on something like this dictated by an opinion
poll," Mr Howard told reporters.

"In the end I've got to call it as it is and in the end I have to say that
solar and wind will not replace conventional power stations."

The ACNielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers found that nine out of 10 people
believe global warming is a problem and 62 per cent are unhappy with the
Howard government's response.

Almost half of those questioned cited solar power as the best weapon against
climate change, while 19 per cent supported a carbon tax on fossil fuels and
17 per cent backed nuclear power.

Mr Howard said the results were unsurprising given the publicity surrounding
last week's Stern report on climate change, which warned of dire
consequences if the problem was not immediately tackled.

"It's a natural response to that sort of question," Mr Howard said.

"I didn't find that surprising. I didn't find the 50 per cent who thought
solar was the answer surprising either, because solar is a nice, easy, soft
answer."

Mr Howard said solar and wind power could make a contribution, but would
never be enough to replace baseload power generation by coal-fired power
stations.

The only way wind power could create enough energy was to have a windmill
"every few hundred feet starting at South Head and going down to Malabar",
he said.

"Well you can imagine the residents of Sydney wanting that," he said.

"You simply won't be able to generate enough power from something like wind
in order to take the load off the power that is generated by the use of coal
and gas and in time I believe nuclear."

Therapeutic cloning bill passes senate
Tuesday Nov 7 21:03 AEDT

Senators have voted to overturn the ban on therapeutic cloning in a rare
conscience vote in parliament.

Drought declared 'worst in millennium'
Tuesday Nov 7 18:54 AEDT

The drought has been declared the worst in a thousand years, but a crisis
summit on the Murray-Darling Basin delivered little help for the parched
river system.

Labor premiers have jumped on the latest grim drought assessment by a
government agency as evidence of "uncharted territory" caused by climate
change.

But Prime Minister John Howard - already sceptical about "extreme"
predictions of the effects of global warming - publicly questioned a top
water bureaucrat's statement that the big dry was a one in 1,000 year event.

Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) official David Dreverman delivered
the bleak news to an emergency summit called by Mr Howard with the four
states which share the river system - NSW, Victoria, South Australia and
Queensland.

Despite Mr Howard questioning the assessment, Mr Dreverman - the
Commission's head of River Murray Water - said the figures backed up his
claim, showing a "quantum leap" in conditions.

Inflows to the river this year - already the lowest on record - were 54 per
cent below the previous minimum, Mr Dreverman said.

"It's more typical of a one in a thousand year (drought), or possibly even
drier, than it is of a one in a hundred year event," he told AAP.

"I made the comment trying to get the message that what we're going through
is not just the driest we've ever had, this year - in the five months to the
end of October - it's the driest we've ever had by about 54 per cent."

He said the dry spell was so bad that the three dams which underpin the
basin's southern farmlands - already predicted to run dry in May - could dry
up even sooner.

The conditions also were so severe that the MDBC's already conservative
sequencing that it uses to plan water allocations would have to be revised,
Mr Dreverman said.

He would not comment on Mr Howard's scepticism and said the MDBC did not
have enough statistics to show the current conditions had been caused by
climate change.

Mr Howard said Mr Dreverman's claim was an off-the-cuff remark.

"You say worst drought in a thousand years, I don't think anybody really
knows that," he told reporters after the summit.

All he knew was that "it's a very bad drought".

While Mr Howard was caught off guard by Mr Dreverman's assessment, South
Australian Labor Premier Mike Rann said it was evidence of climate change.

"What we're seeing with this drought is a frightening glimpse of the future
with global warming," he said.

Despite the urgency of the summit and Mr Dreverman's grim news, Mr Howard
and the premiers of the four Murray-Darling states offered surprisingly
little for the parched basin.

But the premiers of NSW, Victoria and South Australia did agree to begin
permanent cross-border water trading from the beginning of 2007 - a measure
which is expected to see more water delivered to areas which need it most.

NSW and Victoria, which have suspended water trading amid the dry
conditions, will resume temporary trading this Friday.

A working group of state and federal public servants will draw up
contingency plans to secure water supplies for the next water year,
beginning on June 1, reporting back by December 15.

In another measure, the CSIRO has been asked to report progressively by the
end of next year on sustainable yields of surface and groundwater systems
within the Murray-Darling basin.

Labor, the Greens and the Democrats attacked the meeting's outcomes as
woefully inadequate, saying the governments had failed to make any tough
decisions on water.

"The weak response of these governments is absolutely appalling," Greens
senator Rachel Siewert said.