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Episode 10

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The Togetherness Project

Today’s Topic – Loose Ends

This week we will tie up a few loose ends. A bit has happened since we started this show just over two months ago.

First up: What happened last week?:

  • Changes to discretionary trusts1
  • The horrid spectacles of state sanctioned killing – as entertainment2
  • Crime and punishment in Victoria34
  • Fix potholes – reduce taxes; More CFA Funding – lower taxes

The Issues

It is time to have a look at some of the things we talked about before. We will try to update some of what we talked about and get a bit of context.

The Issues

Cost of Living

Batteries. Rechargeable batteries can be bought for around the same cost as the premium alkaline batteries. They will last 3-4 times as long and can then be recharged hundreds of times at about 3 cents per battery charged.

Cosmetics. The demonstrated use of most cosmetics is far in excess of what is needed to be effective. Use less, save more! You do not need to use two lots of shampoo. One is great. Daily washing is actually bad for your hair. A daily wash then needs conditioner and something to add oils back to your hair. Hairdressers suggest 2 weeks between washes is fine. Save big here too.

Cleaning. Cleaning products abound and encourage you to spread them all over the place. Dish washing liquid is fin with a tiny squirt in most cases. Use too much and all you do is cost yourself money.

Gardening. You would think that plants would never survive without frequent application of “plant food” fertilisers. In reality any good soil has plenty of plant nutrients in it, especially if you mulch well. That mulch breaks down and gives your plants what they need. Use a pile of fertiliser and you end up feeding weeds (a definition of weed is a plant you dont want that is good at hogging resources) and then – you are encouraged to use herbicides to control them. Spend your money on mulch and save work while avoiding pollution of ground water.

Online. Buy what you really need and do not get sucked into the “gamification” tricks to get you to buy more and cheap. Get things that last and you save in the long run.

Changing Policy is hard

Why? Vested Interests. Who has the money? Who has the means of communication?

Housing: HIA, Banks, Investors, Estate Agents
Energy: Miners, Super Funds, Share Holders, States, Retailers
Health: AMA, Health Funds, Medical Staff, States, Pharma

We see Miners buying stakes in newspapers to make sure their message is front and centre.Those with the money buy influence in the media and Government.

The role of disinformation and cult recruitment. There have been notable scientific scandals where “contrarian” articles have been written by academics funded by fossil fuel companies and in the past, the tobacco industry. The MAGA Cult actively spreads disinformation. Same with the Sovereign Citizens.

External influencers. Think Russian bot farms

Economics and psychology

Pikertty – Capital. Capital and its Iconography

Galbraith. The End of Normal

Steiglitz. The Great Divide

Kahneman. Thinking Fast – Thinking Slow

What Globalisation brought about. Now we face the consequences of “The End of Normal”

The Economic Assumptions5. Our starting point is the concept of Neoclassical Economics and adding the assumption of unlimited resources, including the capacity for unlimited pollution.

The price of believing the economic assumptions to be realistic include: Growth Addiction and ignoring the obvious Limits to Growth

Data Centres and AI

Is it a Bubble? Compare with 2000s Tech Wreck6

Why do we need it? Who needs it? Who is responsible for bad (bot) actors? How can it be enforced?789

Trustworthy Information

Trust exists because there is independent review and fact checking. Here are some of the sources we use on The Togetherness Project. The ones listed can be read from links (so you can check them yourself) but there are other places that are reliable as well.

ABC. Not perfect but it is journalism driven which has its protections against bias and misrepresentation.

The Guardian. It is left leaning and still maintains journalistic integrity.

New Scientist. Peer reviewed is its standard. The gold standard. We often see reporting in mainstream media derived from the weekly New Scientist magazine.

The Health Report (ABC Podcast). Frequently quotes peer reviewed sources and identifies when opinion is offered. Both summary and deep dives.

The Conversation. Publication of academic research in a similar way to New Scientist. Opinion pieces and topical discussions from experts in their field.

NOT Social Media. It is just not reliable. Clickbait and minimal fact checking is deliberately aiming to provide echo chambers that keep people on the platform – to make money.

The Response

What can we do – Together?

  • Do the things we can individually
  • Join local groups that try to do better things
  • Help each other with random acts of senseless kindness
  • Exercise the critical thinking muscles

The final takeaway is that we know what we can do to make it better and we need a concerted effort to bring about change – TOGETHER

  1. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/oct/15/australia-discretionary-trusts-tax-changes-labor-coalition [↩]
  2. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/abc-news-top-stories/pm-livestream-execution-abhorrent/107262194 [↩]
  3. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/victoria-youth-crime-violence-reduction-unit-right-balance/106028862 [↩]
  4. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/victoria-youth-justice-reforms-more-punitive-than-preventative/106011328 [↩]
  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_economics [↩]
  6. https://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/the-business/2026-09-07/the-bond-meltdown-and-ai-bubble-brewing-the-next-global-financia/107125748)

    Who is paying for it all? Circular funding ((https://theconversation.com/whos-paying-whom-the-circular-money-machine-behind-the-ai-boom-or-bubble-293938 [↩]

  7. https://theconversation.com/companies-that-get-hacked-face-stricter-laws-than-firms-unleashing-rogue-ai-we-can-fix-that-294059 [↩]
  8. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2482317-who-holds-the-keys-to-your-ai-and-why-it-matters/ [↩]
  9. https://theconversation.com/what-are-small-language-models-and-how-do-they-differ-from-large-ones-269103 [↩]

Episode 6

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The Togetherness Project

Today’s Topic – Water

This week we will have a focus on water. A little on the sea and a lot on the water that falls from the sky. Water and particularly fresh water is essential for life on land. We are running out of fresh water and there are some clear reasons for this.

First up: What happened last week?:

  • More talk about AI and its threat of extinction1
  • Western Renewables link approved and under a costing review2
  • Inflation is increasing and the Reserve Bank thinks that increasing interest rates is the way to go3
  • The consequences of USA policies have impacted the world severely. Is it a failed state?4

The Issue – How will we manage when the water runs out? Wasting it seems silly.

Today’s reliable information comes to us courtesy of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.5

The Issues

Growing population

This is a world wide problem but lets focus on Australia and Ballarat. The rapid increase in population and urbanisation has meant that fresh water availability has become a problem. Major cities have captured almost all the available water resources by damming rivers and are resorting to desalination to handle periods of drought.

Perversely, the growing populations of cities limit the capacity to extend catchments while increasing the demand. There is no indication that Ballarat or Australia is seeking to limit population to more sustainable levels.

Water Usage

Daily water usage per capita in Australia is very high at 177l (ABS) and our usage is 4th highest in the world – this is despite restrictions in place in many places. Tap water is purified and safe to drink. It is also used to flush toilets, water gardens and wash clothes, dishes and people. Those things do not necessarily need such pure/treated water. Where is it used?

  • Household ~15%
  • Industry ~85%
    • Agriculture is the main user

Trends?

The trend for about 20 years (post millennium drought) was from a modest decrease to a significant increase of 13% in recent years. This is due to population increase as well as drought conditions.

Who pays?

?  Households paid an average of $3.71 per kilolitre, up 4.4% from 2022–23.

?  Industry paid an average of $0.35 per kilolitre, down 3.4% from 2022–23.

Water for Ballarat

Ballarat is due to have a population of around 200k by mid century. It currently only waters its population with the addition of Goulburn River water via the Goldfields pipeline. How will we have 40% more water in the future?

  • Being at the top of the water catchment means there is limited ability to extend existing catchments. Other catchments like Mt Emu Creek are also limited in capacity. Adjacent rivers like West Moorabool have little flow already.
  • We are left with water efficiency as the key approach
    • Water tanks for garden watering
    • Reuse of waste water
    • Urban stormwater capture
    • More transfers

The Response

What can we do – Together?

  • If you can, get water tanks to supply toilet flushing and garden watering needs
  • Lobby local governments to improve waste water reuse
  • Reduce domestic usage
  • Insist on efficient industry water usage and at fair prices
  • More water wise housing developments
  • Resist the Agribusiness lobbies wanting to keep our water for themselves

The final takeaway is that we know what we can do to make it better and we need a concerted effort to bring about change – TOGETHER

  1. https://theconversation.com/we-really-do-earnestly-believe-ai-could-kill-all-humans-if-ai-labs-are-so-worried-about-ai-doom-why-dont-they-stop-291595 [↩]
  2. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-15/western-renewables-link-ees-approval-ben-carroll-cost-assessment/107154342 [↩]
  3. https://theconversation.com/unemployment-rises-to-4-6-but-a-september-interest-rate-hike-still-looks-likely-290154 [↩]
  4. there is a lot of talk about third world countries becoming failed states; however, the USA is showing all the signs with its loss of democratic governance and abandonment of the “global order” [↩]
  5. Full disclosure: Peta was Senior Project Manager for The Living Murray Initiative, appointed by COAG and is no longer working for anyone! [↩]
A field in Punjab littered with plastic waste, highlighting environmental concerns and pollution issues.

Episode 5

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The Togetherness Project

Today’s Topic – Plastics Waste, AI and Water

We were going to have an episode focusing on social things. How early childhood and supportive communities have a positive effect on life. That will be coming to you in a few weeks.

What happened last week?:

  • The Federal Government abandoned plans to require improved packaging standards to reduce waste and promote recycling1
  • Data centre plan for the NT to use gas from Beetaloo basin rather than renewables2
  • Former employee of Antrhopic, Jacob Coxon says I “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.3
  • Committee for Ballarat highlights the need for water infrastructure if the planned expansion to 200k people – and a resource recovery centre4

The Issue – What to do about Plastic Waste, AI and Water

So today we’re going to talk about why it is critically important that we remove fossil fuel usage as rapidly as it is possible to do so. We will also talk about the risks of AI

Packaging and recycling

Sally is an advocate for removal of plastics from our environment. Let’s hear from her…

The takeout from this is that we are using vast amounts of plastic packaging. Produce in plastic containers, wrapped in plastic and then put into plastic bags. Each piece of plastic embodies fossil fuels and adds to the mountains of plastic pollution.

The NT Data Centre

This hit the news last week as we discovered a deal done to use the newly commissioned Beetaloo Basin gas field to power (generate electricity) for a large data centre in the NT. Is this a good idea? Probably not.

  • Cost, energy and water consumption
  • Plans for more of the same
  • Viable alternatives and plans to export energy to Asia
  • Why do we want them anyway?

Can AI kill us?

A former employee of Anthropic Jacob Coxon has joined other researchers into AI to say that there is a realistic chance that AI could kill people and at the extreme end of the spectrum destroy humanity.

All of this is speculative, however the fact that AI has already “gone rogue” and hacked businesses when it was supposed to be contained and unable to interact with the real world, says that there is something in this report.

Water for Ballarat and Waste to Resource

The Committee for Ballarat has put out a 5 point outline for projects to invest in jobs, growth and livability in Ballarat and Western Victoria. It highlights the need for water infrastructure to support the growth that is pretty well locked in for Ballarat as it services a population of over 300k people in the West

There are three projects focused on economic growth and two on infrastructure that allows growth in population in a sustainable way. The two infrastructure ones are:

  • Water infrastructure is essential to allow more housing to be built. Not to mention the impacts of a drying planet as we heat up to at least 1.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels
  • Resource recovery is the gold standard of the Circular Economy. A growing population needs to handle waste and not by landfill. The argument is both cost and for recovering valuable resources

The Response

What can we do?

  • Avoid plastic packaging whenever possible.
  • Move away from Fossil fuels. Doing so means there is less production of plastics and therefore more sustainable products will be used for packaging
  • Smart Living Ballarat has monthly sessions on how to avoid waste and tap into the Circular Economy
  • See what you can do to get an EV, solar panels and similar.
  • Opt out of casual AI for searching and using applications. If you dont need it then avoiding its use will save energy and reduce demand for data centres
  • Read the proposal from the Committee for Ballarat for some ideas.
  • Talk to your local member/council about the Circular Economy, sustainability and water conservation. It works when they know someone cares about these things

The final takeaway is that we know what we can do to make it better and we need a concerted effort to bring about change – TOGETHER

  1. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/12/labor-ditch-new-packaging-laws-breaking-promise-plastic-waste [↩]
  2. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-22/beetaloo-digital-energy-ai-hyperscale-data-centre-40-billion/106943690 [↩]
  3. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-09/anthropic-researcher-coxon-quits-over-human-threat/107134164 [↩]
  4. State Election Advocacy – https://committeeforballarat.com/our-news/publications/ [↩]

Episode 4

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The Togetherness Project

Today’s Topic – Climate Change

Lets look at some of the things that happened last week – Nepal and much more locally:

  • ~2 cubic km of ice and rock going 4,000m downhill1
  • Why did it happen? Is it “normal”?2
  • Denial again. One nation wants to abolish renewables in favour of coal and gas3
  • VNI West. What it is supposed to do and why cancelling it is a bad idea 4

A focus on Climate Change

The Issue – Addressing runaway climate change is critically important

So today we’re going to talk about why it is critically important that we remove fossil fuel usage as rapidly as it is possible to do so.

The Issue

What happened in Nepal is now a frequent occurrence. It is also something that used to hardly ever happen, Sure, there were snow avalanches but not the whole side of a mountain breaking away like this. The cause was thawing of permafrost (frozen soil/rock that has remained so for decades and more) that triggered the collapse of a glacier and brought down vast quantities of rock with it. Permafrost is thawing at an unprecedented rate, mainly in the northern hemisphere where there is more land for it to form. Why?

It is all about the heating of the atmosphere, oceans and land. Heating that has now accelerated to a rate not seen for over 50 million years. Temperatures not seen for over 3 million years in the Late Pliocene when the earth was dry and sea levels 15-25 m higher than now. The temperatures then were 2.5-4 degrees above 1800/preindustrial levels.

What the geological record tells us is that the rate of change in temperature is higher than any time. Possibly with the exception of when an asteroid hit 66 million years ago and turned the earth into a fireball.

That means we are heading towards a possible to likely scenario where much of the world becomes uninhabitable in the next 30 years. Not a hundred or a thousand. The rate of heating is 10-20 times that of past geological (Pliocene/Eocene boundary) rapid heating records – that is extreme.

Looking at Europe and its record hot summer and the statistics show that the continually escalating unprecedented summer heat is made 130 times more likely by the effects of global warming. People are suffering (even dying) from the heat, fires and drought caused by the effects of global heating.

Even more concerning is that with global population increasing, more and more places where people live are becoming uninhabitable. Low lying places due to sea level rise. Desertification of formerly productive land. Floods and fires as we can see increasingly making places dangerous.

So that is the scary bit. Time for something more scary.

We have politicians in Australia telling us that they want to build coal fired, gas fired and nuclear power stations and avoid renewables. They also want to stop the VNI West transmission line that is planned to allow load balancing of power between NSW and Victoria as well as better access to the abundant wind and solar power in western Victoria.

This is a continuation of climate change denial and a blatant push to support miners, who are struggling to compete with far cheaper and cleaner renewables.5

The case for new coal fired power seems to be that private investment will build and maintain them. The exact opposite is true. Coal fired power stations are expensive to build, expensive to maintain and require polluting feedstock that does environmental damage to extract and transport. Existing coal fired power stations are uneconomic to run without extensive government subsidies. New ones would be facing even bigger challenges and bigger government subsidies to be economic.

Gas is in a similar bind. It is far more expensive now and drives the highest cost of power when it is used to meet peak demands. It is also highly polluting.

Nuclear is more of a stalking horse to delay large scale deployment of things like offshore wind farms. It is the old method of FUD. Use FUD to create uncertainty and that benefits the incumbents.

Lastly, the VNI West is a major transmission line. It gets represented as a burden on western Victoria when it should be seen as a great opportunity to build a stronger, clean economy based on renewables. It is one of the keys to making energy cheaper and available in the quantities needed with electricity demand skyrocketing (did we mention data centres?).

So, the issue in summary: We have a global crisis that is real and imminent. The proposals by One Nation and the Conservative side of politics can only lock in higher prices and make the climate crisis worse. Recommend reading Juice by Tim Winton to see how things could play out.

The Response

What can we do?

  • Start by understanding what is really happening
  • Do the best we can individually:
    • Any energy saving project you can afford. Bring it forward
    • Look at the energy plans that use renewables rather than fossil fuels
    • Look at EVs for your next car
    • Use public transport
    • Consume less while still being comfortable
  • Make a noise. Don’t let vested interests to avoid the consequences of what they have been doing
  • Get involved with local groups that are doing good things. Remember that your own contribution might be small but a million people like you can move a mountain. In a nicer way.
  • Talk to friends and acquaintances with some simple messages. Questions are a good way to start:
    • Why do we want to burn fossil fuels when we know that they are expensive and kill people?
    • Why choose technologies that the market has refused to fund because building coal and nuclear power plants in Australia would result in stranded assets?
    • Why do we want to choose the most expensive forms of power generation over the least expensive?
    • Why are certain powerlines that produce economic benefits and grid resilience seen as a bad thing when the 10,000 km of existing power lines were considered as essential services?
    • Who is behind all this push to do things that independent analysts say are economically and environmentally reckless?
  • Make your vote count. Talk to political candidates and ask them those questions as well.

The final takeaway is that we know what we can do to make it better and we need a concerted effort to bring about change – TOGETHER

  1. https://theconversation.com/the-collapse-of-a-mountainside-triggered-nepals-devastating-floods-as-the-regions-mountains-heat-up-it-wont-be-the-last-290924 [↩]
  2. https://theconversation.com/when-a-mountain-falls-how-ice-and-rock-triggered-nepals-catastrophic-flood-and-why-climate-change-is-raising-the-risks-290779 [↩]
  3. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-31/one-nation-victoria-energy-policy-announcement/107097686 [↩]
  4. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-19/victorian-coalition-promises-to-scrap-vni-west-transmission-line/107053638 [↩]
  5. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-24/fossil-fuel-climate-disinformation-threatens-australia/106490840 [↩]
A messy open refrigerator with fresh vegetables and bread scattered on the floor.

Episode 2

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The Togetherness Project

Today’s Topic – Food Part 2 (updated)

Continuing our series on Food:

  • What kind of shortages do we have?1
  • What about waste?2
  • My Grandma’s garden
  • Industrial farming and alternatives

A focus on Famine

The Issue

So today we’re going to talk about food again. Particularly we’re going to be talking about what ways to produce and consume food other than industrial farming and mass production.3

We are talking about the types of food that has been stored for months and transported over long distances, selected for cosmetic appeal and re-manufactured into something that is not in any way a natural food.4

There is an epidemic of metabolic diseases and other forms of illness that have been linked to ultra processed foods. It should be no surprise that this is scientifically linked to loss of important symbiotic gut flora. It should be no surprise that studies reported in New Scientist (How to think about Ageing) find that traditional diets featuring whole foods and connectedness with community are important factors in living a long and healthy life. So why do we choose differently? 5

We previously talked about waste. Food distribution wastes between 15% (packaged food) and 40% (“slow moving” fresh food). Then households throw out up to 30% of the food bought.

Supermarkets are very good at transferring responsibility to us to do the “right thing” while making it easier on themselves

Packaging is a huge problem. It can be hard to buy fresh food that is not packaged in plastic, put in a plastic bag and then bagged again at a checkout. Why?

The Response

What can we do?

  • Buy local not high food miles. Better food and potentially cheaper
  • Buy fresh and whole foods
  • Cooperatives (Wholefood Collective) – NY city run stores
  • Hidden Orchard
  • Markets/Stalls
  • Buy what you need, not what is packaged up (more in Part 2)
  • Lobby for change – political and to businesses
  • Buy from local farms
  • Seasonal produce
  • Lets start with the quantities we buy. If I want to make say, potato and leek soup, I can buy packets of celery, onions and potatoes, some cream and a leek or two. Unless I want to make two or three batches, there will be too much and I will have to keep the excess for another recipe. Alternatively, I can buy exactly what I need. I can put what I buy in reusable bags or boxes. I can do so at a place where the produce is sourced locally.
  • Today we will talk with Maggie from just this kind of place to buy your food.
  • The final takeaway is that we know what we can do to make it better and we need a concerted effort to bring about change.
  • Yes it is a bit harder to think through what you need, do meal plans and shop efficiently but there is the good stuff:
  • You save money by not buying in excess – even if the per kilo price is a bit higher
  • You don’t pay for the packaging and you don’t have to dispose of it (to do so sustainably costs effort and money)
  • You get fresher and more nutritious food
  • You support producers who are better custodians of the land
  • By buying seasonal food, you multiply those benefits
  • So lets hear from Maggie, from the Wholefood Collective!
  • Have a toolbox of recipes not the same all year
  • Urban farms
  • Grow your own

Now lets hear from Maggie who is from the Wholefood

The final takeaway is that we know what we can do to make it better and we need a concerted effort to bring about change – TOGETHER

  1. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-breakfast/ozharvest-warns-of-rising-food-insecurity/106594414 [↩]
  2. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-13/australia-food-waste-business-economic-cost/107249996 [↩]
  3. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-14/regenerative-agriculture-farming-soil-health-food-security/105024708 [↩]
  4. https://www.foodisfree.com.au/ [↩]
  5. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2016-08-16/community-garden-changes-food-habits-disadvantaged-town/7735190 [↩]
Lush vegetable garden showcasing cabbage and strawberry plants in Kambah, Australia.

Episode 1

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The Togetherness Project

Today’s Topic – Food Part 1

Today we’re going to talk about food. Particularly we’re going to be talking about what we eat and where it comes from. I’m going to start with a little story where yesterday I was walking through Melbourne University and. There I saw queues of students around fast food places. Eating what I would describe as poor quality food that is probably cheap and probably not too much of a problem for young people who need lots of energy – fast.

The Issue

Where does this food come from and how is this different to the kind of diet that our species evolved with? Are our eating habits able to be sustained?1

There is an epidemic of metabolic diseases and other forms of illness that have been linked to ultra processed foods. It should be no surprise that this is scientifically linked to loss of important symbiotic gut flora. It should be no surprise that studies reported in New Scientist (How to think about Ageing) find that traditional diets featuring whole foods and connectedness with community are important factors in living a long and healthy life. So why do we choose differently? Who wants us to eat this way?2

It comes down to psychology and the way we evolved in an environment of scarcity. Added to this we are bombarded with prompts to buy and consume low nutrition foods. More about this in Part 2.

The default for most people is to buy food at supermarkets or fast food outlets. These are “affordable”. The whole of life costs may not be so affordable when we consider years of good health compared to years of ill health and restricted lifestyle.

Supermarket food distribution results in 30% and more wasted food. Households throw out between 20 and 40% of the food bought. All this can feed those in need.

The Response

How do we get out of this mess?

Firstly, people need to be aware that the issue exists and that there is something that can be done about it. Then there needs to be a clear path of action to take. The most important component of the response is to find was to work together to a common cause. *We will revisit this many times in each program.

  • Buy local not high food miles. Better food and potentially cheaper
  • Buy fresh and whole foods
  • Cooperatives (Wholefood Collective) – NY city run stores
  • Hidden Orchard
  • Markets/Stalls
  • Buy what you need, not what is packaged up (more in Part 2)
  • Lobby for change – political and to businesses
  • Buy from local farms
  • Seasonal produce
  • Have a toolbox of recipes not the same all year
  • Urban farms
  • Grow your own

The final takeaway is that we know what we can do to make it better and we need a concerted effort to bring about change

  1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2587239-can-we-really-reverse-global-warming-after-overshooting-1-5c/ [↩]
  2. https://theconversation.com/junk-food-is-promoted-online-to-appeal-to-kids-and-target-young-men-our-study-shows-234285 [↩]

Why the world is less ready for crises

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This little story starts from an overheard conversation in a supermarket today. Warning this posts mentions toilet paper.

Customer: When will you have toilet paper back on the shelves?

Staff: Not for a week or more. We need to bring some in from overseas. You know, we adjust stock levels every 3 months normally

That brought to mind the way we do business now. It is all about just-in-time supply chains. Only stock what you need to fulfil established demand and manufacture to a forward order book.

It is a way of getting that last little bit of competitiveness in a saturated market for commodities and it has proven successful from a commercial perspective. However, the downside of such efficiency is that there is little capacity to respond to a crisis. A crisis like the threat of a viral epidemic/pandemic.

The nature of a crisis is that it is largely unpredictable. You know it will happen at some time but not when. Timing is everything for just-in-time supply chains. When you have everything locked in for 3 months ahead it can take at least half that time to change manufacturing priorities or shipping schedules – even more so for low value and high bulk items that are transported by sea.

In Australia the run on toilet paper, hand sanitiser and facial tissues is a prime example of how a crisis can disrupt a supply chain in a way that is hard to predict. Who would have thought that toilet paper would be the thing that would be in demand for a chest infection? Not the WHO. Not medical professionals. Not even social media. Yet, there was a massive buy up of toilet paper and now it is going to take a long time to get new stocks.

Meanwhile some houses will have a large pile of toilet rolls sitting around and creating a perverse demand profile for the supplier of toilet rolls. Right now there is high pent up demand and yet in the timeframe of 3-12 months the demand will be significantly less. the message to manufacturers is to hurry up and get a large stock into stores and then cut back supply by 50% or more for a year because so many people will have no need to buy it for a long time. The need for additional toilet paper due to the virus is highly unlikely to eventuate.

Hand sanitiser and tissues are a different thing. They are value added products and justify a higher price. They are less bulky and can be transported by air without too much additional cost. We will probably see these products on the shelves again quicker. Both are likely to be used more as a result of the virus so the supply chain is likely to adjust better.

This is just an example of how modern, efficient manufacturing and supply is not ready for a crisis. Put another way it is not structured well for handling risk. Let’s look at the flip side of this risk approach – fuel and oil supplies.

Most Governments mandate a minimum stockpile of oil and/or petrol, gas and inputs to electricity generation. This stockpile or reserve is needed in case of any number of “shocks” such as war, natural disasters, pandemics or similar regional or global crises. This makes sense because those commodities are clearly essentials necessary for national security. Toilet paper? probably not front of mind for strategic policy thinktanks.

The way to manage risks in a supply chain is to hold stock that lets you ride out a crisis that is mild to moderate. However, the way to make money and have your commodity manufacturing business survive in a globally competitive market is to do everything just-in-time. The two are almost mutually exclusive ways of doing business.

Piping hot water

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I picked this up from a post in Facebook … the source of truth and accuracy. I have heard quite a lot about the abundance of water that we are “letting run to the sea” and similar nonsense. So I need to write something about it.

Water flowing to the sea down the Murray?

Yes, a lot of water does run into the sea. Some even from the Murray-Darling does get there. However this does not mean that the water is economically transportable and able to be managed with a “simple pipeline”. You might see a very large flow down the Murrumbidgee or Murray rivers right now and think that this is water going to the Murray Mouth. Reality is that this water is flowing from large dams in the upper catchments (Hume Weir for the Murray and Burrinjuck for the Murrumbidgee) to be pumped out or diverted for irrigation. The only efficient way to get the required water to the irrigation areas is, perversely, to almost flood the river channels. I saw this in action recently while travelling from Canberra to Melbourne.

So here are a few facts:

Inputs

  • About 7.1 Gl of water is flowing into South Australia per day.
  • 1.2 Gl is delivered via the Murrumbidgee as part of the Inter Valley Trade arrangements. This comes from Burrinjuck and Blowering Dams. losses are in the order of 0.3 Gl and that means 1.5 Gl is released to achieve the required output
  • About 3.4 Gl is released from MDBA storages that flow from the Hume Weir
  • There is an amount around 1 Gl released from the Snowy Scheme
  • The Goulburn is contributing 1.6 Gl
  • other Victorian tributaries contribute about 1.4 Gl
  • The Darling is contributing 0 – in fact taking some of the water out of the Murray
  • Overall that is 8.6 – the balance is what is evaporating

Outputs in the lower river

  • Of the 7.1 Gl a day going into SA:
  • 3.3 Gl a day goes to SA consumption – essentially a large chunk of the Adelaide water supply
  • 2.9 Gl a day is lost to seepage and evaporation
  • the remaining 0.9 Gl is environmental water. This is water to maintain sufficient level in Lake Alexandrina to prevent it becoming too salty to support its natural ecosystem
  • There is no flow out of the Murray Mouth. There is an occasional release of water through the Barrages at low tide to reduce salinity. That is all.

So 7.1 Gl seems like a lot of water. So lets see what the diversions for irrigation are. Firstly lets see what the security of water entitlements are.

NSW – Murray Valley   Victorian – Murray Valley
High security 97% General security 0%   High reliability 56% Low reliability 0%
NSW – Murrumbidgee Valley   Victorian – Goulburn Valley
High security 95% General security 6%   High reliability 64% Low reliability 0%
NSW  – Lower Darling   South Australia – Murray Valley
High security 30% General security 0%   High security 100%

Major Diversions from Murray and Lower Darling (GL) *

New South Wales This Week From 1 July 2019 Victoria This Week From 1 July 2019
Murray Irrig. Ltd (Net) 1.8 98 Yarrawonga Main Channel (net) 3.5 63
Wakool Sys Allowance 2.3 24 Torrumbarry System + Nyah (net) 0 141
Western Murray Irrigation 0.6 10 Sunraysia Pumped Districts 6.2 47
Licensed Pumps 4.7 56 Licensed pumps – GMW (Nyah+u/s) 1 10
Lower Darling 0.0 0 Licensed pumps – LMW 4.6 169
TOTAL 9.4 188 TOTAL 15.3 430

The tables above are from the December 18 MDBA River Murray Weekly Report. Victoria and NSW have different regulation for entitlements however it is clear that plenty of water from the MDBA Storage is consumed for irrigation. Then we need to look at the NSW data.

Consumption expected for irrigation (annual) Gl
Conveyance 265
Losses (transmission, evaporation, operational) 278
Total Losses553
Announced High Security (95%) 348
Announced General Security (6%) 113
Total Irrigation462

So there is 1015 Gl for the year and about double the daily average is used in Summer. That gives 5.6Gl a day down the Murrumbidge for irrigation purposes. 1.2 Gl for Adelaide, the SA consumption and maintaining the health of the Coorong and Lake Alexandrina. The comparison is a little less extreme for the Victorian situation. More of the water that goes down the stream reaches SA and there is less consumption (15.3 Gl a week compared to 39 Gl for the Murrumbidgee).

Human needs

342 Gl is reserved/allocated to critical human needs across the Basin. The majority of this is used in the large cities, Adelaide, Canberra, Albury/Wodonga, Toowoomba, Shepparton, Bendigo, Wagga Wagga etc. It is not clear to me whether that number includes extractions of 70Gl to Melbourne from the Goulburn River. The fact that it is so hard to find information on community use of water and so easy to find information on what irrigator entitlement is very instructive.

Critical Human Needs are prioritised first and then other uses which are theoretically decided on economic grounds. I have written other articles on the relative value of water for different uses see: http://petaguy.info/blog/sustainability/water-use-in-the-murray-darling. In fact high security irrigation water gets prioritised over other uses that might deliver higher economic value because of the special status assigned to it in legislation. it is hard to argue that the 70Gl diverted to Melbourne or the amount allocated to Adelaide is bad economics; quite the reverse.

Summary

So, as with all things water, it is complicated. But with a lot of digging into the data, it is clear that water running in the major rivers is actually travelling to be used for high security allocation (mostly irrigation but also industrial) and critical human needs. Not to run into the sea.

A tiny fraction of the water going down the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers is reaching the ocean. Around 40% is evaporating and nearly all the rest is being consumed. About 5 Gl a year is used to reduce salinity in the Coorong and Lake Alexandrina – less than is used for irrigation in a day on the Murrumbidgee alone. Life sustaining uses by basin communities consume around 120 Gl a year. One third of a Gl a day.

Around 60% of all available water is used for irrigation in the Murray Darling Basin. less than 10% is used for people who live in the Murray Darling Basin. Most of the unavailable cannot be stored or harnessed. The remainder can only be used for irrigation by degrading the natural environment – therefore affecting people’s lives and livelihood.

So what about pipes?

Pipes are a different thing again. Let’s see if we can find an answer to the question “Why don’t we pump water from the big rivers to the dry ones?”. The following are areas I will analyse and discuss:

  • Small municipal pipes
  • Industrial pipelines
  • Existing inter-valley pipes
  • Long pipes
  • Pipes over mountains
  • Economics

The Problem with Pipes

Pipes are a very good way of transporting water downhill and over relatively short distances. However, pipes are not that efficient for carrying a liquid over long distances. Some basics.

A typical irrigation channel in the Murray valley can move at least 100 cubic metres of water a minute or 0.1 Ml/m. gravity can move this much with a slope of a few mm per km. A pipe, is much smaller and you need to add energy to overcome friction. Rather than energy consumption, the measure used in pipes is pressure. 1 Bar is the same as atmospheric pressure. Two Bar of pressure is considered “good” pressure from a tap.

Taking a 50mm pipe that is 18 km long, and carrying 100l per minute, you need about 28 bar of pressure at the water tower. That water travels at 0.85 m/sec. You would not want to use a higher pressure than that at the tower.

Of course, you could go to a 100mm pipe and the pressure drop would only be 1 Bar. The problem is that a 100mm pipe costs about 7 times the cost of the 50 mm one when installation costs are taken into account. The pipe materials alone cost 5 times as much. In practice water networks use large main pipes (400 mm or more) to supply a suburb and a smaller one (100mm) to supply a street then 19mm or smaller to supply a house.

Small Municipal Pipes

Most pipes we come across are small municipal pipes that carry water to homes and factories. Their source water is usually quite close and high above the city or town. We rarely consider that the water needs to be pumped to local water towers and that there is a cost to that. After all, we need the water and are happy to pay for it. Even if that is $3-4,000 per mega litre. Most of that cost is for storage, pumping and treatment. Then there is a supply fee that covers some of the cost of maintaining the pipes and water towers (usually located on convenient hills nearby a suburb)

Within that substantial cost it is easy to forget that there is that inbuilt cost of transporting the water by pipe.

We know that copper pipes cost a lot. Just ask any plumber what it might cost for a 50m pipe – you are unlikely to get a quote for less than $1000 just to supply it. Steel pipe is cheaper to buy but will not last as long in the ground, especially.

Industrial Pipelines

Industrial pipelines are larger than the domestic ones because they need to carry more water. This usually means a higher fixed supply cost because the infrastructure costs typically 5-10 times that of a domestic connection to install and maintain. Cost of the pipe is roughly linear with length of the pipe and at least 7 times the cost to install each time you double it between 50mm and 400mm. Sizes above that cost about 10 times when you double the size and are of a different construction.

If you want a flow of 1 kl/sec with a 5km pipe length (from a 400mm main) and the source pressure is limited to 50 Bar you will need around 200mm pipe diameter. This means a cost equivalent to supplying a a water main for a street of 100 -200 houses. Roughly $100,000.

In reality industrial suburbs share the infrastructure costs so the individual costs are lower. However, I am focusing on costs of pipes.

Long Pipes

To get water from, say the Atherton Tablelands to the upper reaches of the Darling system you would have to pipe water about 1,600 km.

What happens when you want to put the same 1kl of water per minute through a 1600 km pipe? You will need to have a pressure of 230 Bar to push that through. However high pressure pipe costs more. Or you could go to 300mm pipe to get a pressure drop of 32 Bar. Either way the cost increases per km. So if we take the baseline of a 5km pipe of 200mm at $100,000 and factor the length and size increase in we get $100,000 x 4 x 320 = $128 million (rounding up the 3.94 factor for diameter increase – 1600/5=320)

Now 1 kl/sec is a trickle compared to the needs of irrigators. Lets see what happens when we scale up to one irrigation channel of flow. We need a 1500 mm pipe to handle that flow. The diameter is 5 times as big and just that factor would increase the cost by 25 times. However the construction of the pipes changes and the complexity of the pipe laying too for many reasons. Overall the cost is going to be something like 50 times and possibly 100 times if the terrain is difficult.

That means the cost is going to be at least $6.4 billion for the equivalent of a single irrigation channel flow of water. If we wanted to do the equivalent of 10 irrigation channels, which would be significantly increasing the capacity to irrigate in the Darling, the cost would be around $13 billion with a 3000mm pipe and much more risk involved.

Some further issues with long pipes include the fact that they will have to cross private property and impact the environment. Both these factors have potentially high costs for compensation.

Pipes over Mountains

Pipes going over mountains have additional problems. Pumping water uphill is expensive. Every kl of water pumped up a 100m rise takes about 100 million joules. If we want 100 kl per minute pumped then we have to provide 167 kW of power to do that. Every hour that happens, there is a consumption of 167 kW hours of electricity – to deliver 6 mega litres of water in that hour. The cost of that per hour is about $11,000. If it operated for a year at full capacity, 52 Gl of water would be pumped at a cost of at least $96 million dollars.

You do get some energy back again when the water flows down hill. It will be lost eventually because of friction and over a long pipe the friction losses are high. However, there are additional issues with water pressure and fluid dynamics that create significant risks in a long pipe with a large flow.

The take away is that mountains cost money when you put lots of water over them.

Case Study – North-South Pipeline

The Sugarloaf or North-South Pipeline travels 70 km and crosses the Great Dividing Range. It cost $750 million to construct. It uses about 260 MW hours of electricity to pump up to 75 GL per annum and less in wetter years. See the link below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_Pipeline

Friction

Lets work out how much energy it would cost to send water from just beyond Townsville to the Darling. Here are the key factors. 100 kl per minute sent 1600 km with the water pumped 100 m up and then dropping 300 m to an open outlet. It needs to run at a discharge rate of 1.7 kl per second and with a 1.5m diameter smooth concrete pipe most of the way and a high pressure metal pipe over the mountains, the flow rate is just under 1 m/sec. in this scenario the head loss is just over 1,000 m due to friction – resulting in a nett head loss of 800. I will optimistically assume that the overall drop is 200m and that there are no pumping losses to lift the water (which are actually large).

167 kWh x 8 = 1.3 MWh per hour to pump 6 Ml of water from source to outlet. This is using the calculation for a 100m drop/rise and multiplying it to reflect a 800m head loss. If operated full time the cost would be 11.4 GWh and a cost of $1.7 million to pump 52 Gl of water if electricity costs 15 cents a kWh.

The Bottom Line

The analysis preceding shows that there is a high cost to pumping significant amounts of water over long distances. There is a business case for doing this for augmenting city water supplies, however there is hardly a case for providing irrigation water at a cost of $32,850 a Gl. Irrigators buy water for much less than that.

My calculations are conservative. Water delivered through a long pipeline will be much more expensive. A 70 km pipeline cost over $10 million a km to build. A 1,600 km pipeline scales up to $16 billion at that rate – without complications. Operating costs for pumping water on top of the high capital cost demonstrate why this is not feasible.

I do not think this is a realistic solution to the water problem. As unpalatable as it may seem, the better option is likely to be to re-allocate water from low productivity irrigation and learn to farm sustainably – like the original owners did for thousands of years.

Why I am not using Facebook now

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Facebook has been a part of my life for over 10 years. It has been a useful thing for communicating with friends and acquaintances across the world. It was very important when I was running a large online gaming community with people from almost every country involved.

However, the business practices of Facebook are at best questionable and several incidents recently have led me to stop using it.

The trigger was when Facebook put a button saying “Boost this post” on the administrative page for a group I administer. I clicked this button to see what it did, expecting something similar to what most forums do to put the post to the top of the view. Instead, it commenced an advertising campaign (on a relatively trivial message to a group) attracting charges. I discovered this when I received a message offering to increase the distribution of the advertising for further fees.

Following the link to “manage your ad” I tried to find how to cancel it. The only options I could initially find were to change capped amount to spend. I did eventually find an option that appeared to allow cancellation via a “Cancel” button and that appeared to work. But it did not! resulting in a continuation of the advertisement.

So here the real fun begins. I challenged them over a charge of 22 Euro. I suspect that many or most would just pay up and put it down to experience. I challenged this because it is as near to a scam as you can get. It may be an official one as far as Facebook is concerned.

The reply to my challenge and narrative of events was the corporatoid “you agreed to the terms and conditions”. However, as I pointed out repeatedly, I had not knowingly authorised an advertisement or to pay for such an advertisement. There was no indication that I was clicking on a button that would automatically trigger a bill and advertise a private post (to the closed group) to some unidentified audience. What sane person would authorise such a thing anyway? A reasonable person would expect to see some kind of dialogue to confirm agreement to committing to an advertising campaign, most especially when such a commitment is hidden behind jargon such as “Boost”. I have searched the terms and conditions to see where I might have signed up for advertisements by clicking a random button on their website but have failed to see this in terms I understand. It smells very scammy to me. It looks scammy. Probably is one.

What all this says to me is that Facebook cannot be trusted. Not with my online data, knowledge of friendships, personal information or to not take money from me without my authorisation.

That is why.