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"While primary responsibility in these matters rests with state and territory governments, there should be a more consistent approach than currently exists across Australia," Mr Turnbull said.

Members of the working group represent a balance of community, rural, local government and wind energy industry interests. The members are:

• Denis Smedley, a senior executive of the Department of the Environment and Water Resources (Chair)
• Ms Liz Johnstone, senior planning adviser at the Municipal Association of Victoria
• Andrew Richards, chair of the Australian Wind Energy Association, a vice president of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, and Executive Manager, Corporate Affairs and Marketing, Pacific Hydro
• Brett Thomas, managing director of Melbourne arm of Acciona, a world leader in renewable energy
• Tim Le Roy, spokesperson for the Tarwin Valley Coastal Guardians
• Yvonne Wenham, spokesperson for Friends of Future Generations (SA)
• David Clarke, a farmer from Waubra, Victoria
• Di Jay, CEO of the Planning Institute of Australia
• Colin Griffith, CEO, Australian Council of National Trusts

South Australia had cut its forecast for total grain production this harvest by 21 per cent, helping push global wheat prices to a record, reported The Age (7/9/2007, p. B3).

Wheat prices double: The state might produce 5.5 million tonnes of all grains this harvest, down from an estimate of 6.98 million tonnes last month, Rural Solutions SA said in its latest crop report. Wheat prices had more than doubled in the past year as global demand outpaced supply and stockpiles shrank.

Crops dying: Two months of below-average rain and warmer than average weather have prompted reductions to forecasts. "Significant rainfall is needed immediately to stabilise crop yield potential at current levels," Rural Solutions SA said in the report on its website. "In the driest areas on Eyre Peninsula and the upper north, crops are dying off and will not recover, while other crops have been grazed or cut for hay if they have sufficient bulk."

Production down more than a fifth: Wheat futures for December delivery rose to a record $US8.49 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on 6 September. South Australia might produce 2.58 million tonnes of wheat, down 24 per cent from the previous forecast, the agency said. Output of barley might be 1.9 million tonnes, 21 per cent lower than the estimate of 2.4 million tonnes a month ear­lier. South Australia was the country’s largest barley growing state.

The Age, 7/9/2007, p. B3

Bureau of Meteorology nat­ional climate centre chief Michael Coughlan said hopes were fading fast for desperately needed rains, reported The Age (7/9/2007, p. 4).

Food prices tipped to rise: "Is this drought over? Certainly not — we can’t predict when this drought will end," Dr Coughlan said. Murray Darling Basin Com­mission chief executive Wendy Craik said irrigators on the Mur­ray River, including many Victor­ian citrus growers and dairy farmers, faced their worst ever summer. Fresh produce would be hit and food prices would probably rise, Dr Craik warned.

Over half all agricultural land drought-declared: The experts were at a drought briefing in Melbourne organised by the Australian Science Media Centre. More than half of Australia’s agricultural land, including all of Victoria’s, is now drought-declared, costing the Federal Government $1.8 billion so far. Exceptional circumstances funding for many areas will run out in March next year. But the Government may extend the emergency relief, Department of Agriculture drought manager Matt Koval said. That would mean spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra to bail out farmers.

The Age, 7/9/2007, p. 4

Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Ed Thomas said the transfer was safely conducted and the weapons were in Air Force custody and control at all times.

However, the mistake was not discovered until the B-52 landed at Barksdale, which left the warheads unaccounted for during the approximately 3 1/2 hour flight between the two bases, the officers said.

An investigation headed by Maj. Gen. Douglas Raaberg, director of Air and Space Operations at Air Combat Command Headquarters, was launched immediately to find the cause of the mistake and figure out how it could have been prevented, Thomas said.

Air Force officials wouldn’t officially specify whether nuclear weapons were involved, in accordance with long-standing Defense Department policy regarding nuclear munitions, Thomas said. However, the three officers close to the situation did confirm the warheads were nuclear.

Officials at Minot immediately conducted an inventory of its nuclear weapons after the oversight was discovered, and Thomas said he could confirm that all remaining nuclear weapons at Minot are accounted for.

“Air Force standards are very exacting when it comes to munitions handling,” he said. “The weapons were always in our custody and there was never a danger to the American public.”

At no time was there a risk for a nuclear detonation, even if the B-52 crashed on its way to Barksdale, said Steve Fetter, a former Defense Department official who worked on nuclear weapons policy in 1993-94. A crash could ignite the high explosives associated with the warhead, and possibly cause a leak of the plutonium, but the warheads’ elaborate safeguards would prevent a nuclear detonation from occurring, he said.

“The main risk would have been the way the Air Force responded to any problems with the flight because they would have handled it much differently if they would have known nuclear warheads were onboard,” he said.

The risk of the warheads falling into the hands of rogue nations or terrorists was minimal since the weapons never left the United States, according to Fetter and Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an independent research and policy think tank in Washington, D.C.

The crews involved with the mistaken load at the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot have been temporarily decertified from performing their duties involving munitions pending corrective actions or additional training, Thomas said.

Air Combat Command will have a command-wide mission stand down Sept. 14 to review their procedures in response to this oversight, he said.

“The Air Force takes its mission to safeguard weapons seriously,” he said. “No effort will be spared to ensure that the matter is thoroughly and completely investigated.”

Success in life extension work by Bass Strait operator Esso has prompted the ExxonMobil subsidiary to predict that the region still had more than 20 years left of oil production and more than 30 years of gas, reported The Sydney Morning Herald (30/7/2007, p.22). A $400 million seismic data and infill drilling program, involving wells at the Kingfish, Bream, Halibut and Fortescue fields, was adding 30,000 barrels of crude oil to daily production, worth close to $1 billion a year on current prices. But Esso’s success had implications for the planned $5 billion Monash Energy coal-to-liquids project in the Latrobe Valley, a joint venture between Shell and Anglo American.

Feds pump money into CO2 dump demos: The potential for carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Bass Strait’s reservoirs was the subject of a Federal Government-funded study by Monash that found there was massive storage capacity in depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs or in deeper geological structures.

NIMBY says Esso: But success in the Esso infill program suggested that the implementation of CCS in Bass Strait could be further off than first thought, given the intention of draft legislation that existing oil and gas production not be affected by licences issued for CCS. Monash countered that there was "still no new information to challenge the initial conclusion that hydrocarbon extraction and CCS can be entirely compatible activities in the Gippsland Basin [Bass Strait]".

The Sydney Morning Herald, 30/7/2007, p. 22

"The response is still ongoing… Most of the 200,000 plus people who were homeless at the end of August have by now been given shelter," Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.

In neighbouring Uganda, the minister in charge of refugees and disaster preparedness said that 300,000 people were in need of humanitarian assistance.

"The situation borders a crisis," Musa Ecweru said. He said nine Ugandans had died as a result of the floods, which he described as "a new phenomenon that we have not experienced for many years."

Assistance programs

Kenya has also suffered from the downpours, a year after unprecedented floods displaced 700,000 people.

"We have activated our disaster response and the Government and aid groups are providing food, shelter and medicine to those affected by the floods," government spokesman Alfred Mutua said.

The UN’s food agency (WFP) and the Ethiopian authorities announced Friday they had launched a programme of food assistance targeting some 60,000 people among the most affected by the floods across the country.

"An estimated 183,000 people have been affected by floods this year… 42,000 of which were displaced and are in temporary shelters," Ethiopia’s WFP spokeswoman Paulette Jones said.

"The figures are only estimated, they could rise once an assessment team concludes its study," she said.

Western and central Africa were not spared, as floods there have affected at least 500,000 people, according to the UN.

At least 33 people have died in Burkina Faso, 20 in Togo and six in Ghana, according to figures released by the UN humanitarian affairs office in Geneva.

Torrential rains and floods have also taken a heavy toll on Nigeria, where 41 people have died in northern and central regions.

In Togo, non-stop rain over several days has washed away or damaged 22,000 hut homes, more than 100 bridges and 58 schools and colleges, along with 1,500 hectares of food crops and has left 34,000 people homeless.

– AFP