Publication (Annual report): CRCFE Annual Report 2001-2002

Publication Type:	Annual report
Publication Name:	CRCFE Annual Report 2001-2002

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CRC for Freshwater Ecology (2002) CRCFE Annual Report 2001-2002, CRCFE, Canberra.

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ANNUAL REPORT 2001-2002

(PDF file (1.3Mb) attached above - Please Note: Pages 10 & 11 are missing from this file.)

Chairman’s Foreword
The past year has seen a ‘changing of the guard’ with Ben Gawne replacing Terry Hillman as Director of the Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre, and Gary Jones replacing Peter Cullen as Chief Executive of the CRC for Freshwater Ecology from 1 July 2002 onwards.

Deciding on a new Chief Executive is the most important decision a board can make. The Board established a Selection Committee, which I chaired, to negotiate with the University of Canberra and initiate an international search after consultation with all Board members. The University of Canberra agreed to provide a tenured professorship for the Chief Executive, continuing the conditions that applied to the previous incumbent. Recognising the importance of the appointment to the University of Canberra, Professor Roger Dean, Vice Chancellor of the University joined the Selection Committee. Four candidates were short listed and interviewed, including two international candidates. After careful deliberation the selection committee recommended the appointment of Professor Gary Jones, then Director of Knowledge Exchange with the CRC for Freshwater Ecology.

Gary brings considerable knowledge, skill, experience and enthusiasm to the position. He has a first class honours degree in science from Monash University majoring in aquatic botany, and a PhD in aquatic chemistry from the University of Melbourne.
Subsequently Gary was awarded a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellowship to one of the world’s leading aquatic chemistry laboratories at the MIT in Boston, USA, followed by an industry-funded Senior Research Fellowship to one of Britain’s leading environmental microbiological laboratories at the University of Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Gary returned to Australia in 1989 to join CSIRO’s Division of Water Resources as a research group leader. He was appointed as the ARMCANZ National Algal Manager in 1995, a position that gave Gary considerable exposure to the challenges facing Australia’s land and water managers. In 2001 Gary was appointed as Director of Knowledge Exchange with the CRC for Freshwater Ecology and as a professor at the University of Canberra. As chairman of the River Murray Expert Reference Panel on Environmental Flows and Water Quality he made an outstanding contribution to informing community stakeholders on the science of environmental flows in the Murray.

The Board is looking forward to Gary applying his considerable talents to shaping the future of the CRC for Freshwater Ecology.

Professor Peter Cullen, winner of the Prime Minister’s Environmentalist of the Year Award, and ‘Australia’s most respected greenie’, according to Senator RobertHill, will be no mean act to follow. At this point I would like to pay tribute to Peter’s outstanding contribution to the CRC for Freshwater Ecology and management of Australia’s fresh waters.

Peter was the driving force behind the first bid for a CRC for Freshwater Ecology in 1991. Unfortunately the bid, while highly competitive, was unsuccessful.
Peter showed great strength of character in over coming the failure and developing a stronger and ultimately successful bid in 1992. The CRC for Freshwater Ecology was up and away with Peter as the inaugural Chief Executive. The record of the CRC stands as testament to Peter’s abilities — an outstanding report from the5th Year Review Panel, and a successful rebid including significant new partners, speak volumes.

Peter was appointed as President of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies(FASTS), the peak body representing Australian scientific organisations. He presented the public face of Australian science through media interviews and presentations to scientific conferences and community meetings.

As President of FASTS, Peter gained a seat on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC) and made significant contributions to the Council’s deliberations on salinity and biodiversity.

One of Peter’s greatest contributions lies in the area of communication. Explaining complex scientific concepts in ways that the community can understand is a daunting task. Peter is a master at it. Peter’s own words, best expressed in a recent interview, describe his achievement:

‘I believe my biggest personal contribution has been in the delivery of knowledge.We understood the need for media and communications to familiarise the public and the professions with what we were doing in the CRC, but this wasn’t sufficient.We needed to better advise our stakeholders on a technical level, and this led to the evolution of the knowledge broker concept. This strengthened the links between the producers of the knowledge and the users of this knowledge. I believe this put the CRC ahead of the pack.’

How right he was! I would like to thank Peter on behalf of the Board for an outstanding contribution to the CRC for Freshwater Ecology, and to more sustainable management of Australia’s freshwater resources.

I also thank my fellow Board members and the staff of the CRC for their contributions in what has been a particularly challenging year.

Dr John Langford
Chairman of the Board

Chief Executive's Report

The 2001–02 year has been an exciting one for the CRC for Freshwater Ecology (CRCFE). Ecological issues are now firmly centre-stage in much of the decision making with regard to water resources. The findings from the various research projects conducted over the nine years of our operations are now finding their way into management thinking.

The work we have done on assessing river health has led to the waterways condition report of the National Land and Water Resources Audit — an international first as a national approach to assessing river health.
That assessment has also provided the Snapshot of the Murray-Darling Basin River Condition that was considered by the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council at its April meeting, and that was a formative step in the Council moving forward on the Murray Environmental Flows project. This work, led by Associate Professor Richard Norris, has been the foundation for the next stage in the evolution of river health assessment, the Sustainable Rivers Audit that was developed specifically for the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and is now being trialled by them.
It has taken us almost a decade to develop these techniques, to get governments to undertake the data collection, and for us to analyse and model the data to produce the various products now in regular use by governments.

The CRCFE continues to undertake fundamental work on the environmental allocations needed to maintain healthy rivers, and has contributed many ideas that are now guiding day-to-day decision-making by governments and community groups. Professor Gary Jones led the Murray Environmental Flows Project that is now providing the background for a major public consultation that will determine the sort of River Murray we live with in the future and leave for our children. Another major project, funded by the Murray- Darling Basin Commission, is to undertake an ecological study of the Narran lakes, a Ramsar-listed wetland that receives water from the Condamine-Balonne system.

This is my last Annual Report, since I am retiring from the CRC for Freshwater Ecology at the 30th June, and will retire from the University soon after that.
The Board has appointed Professor Gary Jones as my successor, and I wish him well in this new role. Gary has been our Director of Knowledge Exchange for the last year, leading our team of five highly talented and committed knowledge brokers who deliver our science to our partner organisations and others.

The power of the CRC model is the ongoing relationship and trust that builds up between the research community and the industry users. It is not always an easy relationship, but over time the trust grows as we all realise we can achieve much more working together than we had been able to achieve in isolation. I think our CRC has been a great example of this.

I retire now with considerable pride in what we have achieved. We set as our Vision at the beginning of the CRC that we were here to make the waters better.
Freshwater ecology is now a central plank in the knowledge needed to manage water resources in this country. Not only are we producing and delivering useful knowledge, but Ministers seek our advice on many issues as do agencies, the media and the community.

The CRC has some wonderfully talented scientists working within it, and what we have achieved has been due to their energy, their curiosity and their insights, as well as their preparedness to help us deliver the knowledge in various ways to those who need it. I am also greatly heartened by the quality and energy of those who are involved in the post-graduate program of the CRCFE across its various universities.
Universities are finding it difficult to maintain their commitments to CRCs due to the financial stringencies within which they operate, but the resources, the intellectual environments and the agency connections produced within the CRC program provide a postgraduate experience that is vastly superior to the experience the universities are able to provide themselves alone.

I would also like to pay particular tribute to Professor Barry Hart, who has decided to stand down as Director of Research of the CRCFE, although he will continue his research work in the CRC. Barry has provided strong scientific leadership to the CRCFE over the last decade and his contribution is greatly appreciated.

The CRCFE would not have achieved as much as it has without the committed governance provided by our Board, and in particular our Chairman, Dr John Langford. The Board has to reconcile many competing interests, and give a clear framework in which we can generate and deliver the scientific knowledge needed to manage our water resources. They have done a great job in this and their support and encouragement are appreciated by me and by staff and students throughout the CRC.

Professor Peter Cullen
Chief Executive

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