Jennifer Marohasy

Based on the 130 years of data, Baker predicts that the current solar cycle, which reached a minimum in 2007, will continue a bit longer. In fact, he says, “there could be a 100-year minimum in solar activity,” meaning much of Australia could experience a prolonged drought.  Read more here.

DR Dennis Jensen BAppSc (RMIT), MSc (Melb), PhD (Monash) is the only member of the Australian Parliament with any training in science a PhD in a science discipline. 
[As correctly pointed out in the comments following this posting, my brother Jim Turnour, also a member of the Federal Parliament, has a Batchelor of Agricultural Science.  Other [...]

Rainfall data back to 1863 does not support the claim made by the Head of Climate Analysis at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology that there has been recent unusual climate change in Melbourne.

Australia could experience drought twice as often and the events will be twice as severe within 20 to 30 years, according to a new Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO report.
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Tony Burke yesterday released the report commissioned by the Rudd Government as part of a review of national drought policy.
According [...]

Water has always been a volatile topic in Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent, but the political row that broke out last week was perhaps surprising. Protesters are complaining that a planned desalination facility outside Melbourne, Victoria, will generate too much freshwater.
As Neil Rankine ( a spokesman for protest group Your Water Your Say) and [...]

Media reports yesterday** correctly drew attention to the fact that there are levy banks within the Macquarie Marshes and that they are depriving key wetland areas of water.
But the stories went on to lump upstream legal and planned irrigation development that makes allocations for environmental flows with legal and illegal levies on grazing land within [...]

While the Murray River is flowing strongly despite the drought, many of its tributaries are drying up.
Yesterday I visited the Wakool River with Wakool Landholders Association Chairman John Lolicato.
He showed me a spot downstream of Gee Gee bridge where there is still water in deep holes. A bit upstream the river has been [...]

The heavy rain which has fallen across southern Australia in the past few days and caused flooding in parts of Victoria, has hardly made a dent in the record low storage levels of the Murray-Darling system.
ABC News: ‘Murray-Darling still in trouble despite welcome rain’
Thanks to Luke Walker for the link

Rain may have fallen over parts of south-eastern Australia over the weekend - in some places to the point of flooding - but the confidence of farmers in the future of their businesses has fallen to its lowest level this year, results from Westpac and Charles Sturt University reveals.
ABC News: ‘Farmer confidence hits yearly low [...]

The Coalition will not fund future drought preparedness measures as part of its agricultural election policy, due out in a fortnight, but will stick with its existing drought assistance measures despite calls for change from State Governments and the National Farmers Federation.
farmonline: ‘Election ‘07: Drought preparedness not in Coalition ag policy’