If the people of Australia had any brains they would get rid of State governments and do something radical with local Councils. Perhaps by paying them a good deal of money and making their records transparent would be one step to take. The ability of a state government to over-ride our Federal Government is the sort of thing which bumptious clods and serial bullies like Barnaby Joyce, not to mention the Premier of Victoria, John Brumby, to crow about. Pity about the devastation done to the land.

Even more sickening is the amount of money dished out to the pathetic rural sector in times of drought. They, and their mining pals, irrigation pals, old uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, caused the various droughts that assail this nation-let ‘em stew-therefore they should suffer in silence. Either that or issue licenses to would-be farmers. They’re the ones who are to be found during the drought-on our national television channel scanning the never-ending horizon and whingeing about the fact it hasn’t rained for the past ten years. Fast forward and there is our happy rural. It has rained-the drought has broken-and there he is mindlessly repeating what he has done for the past ten or more years. Has any effort been made in proper soil management; has he learned anything by his experiences? No, he is just another C:CW.

For Cubbie Station to pay a scant “$37,000 a year for an allocation of over 500,000ML of water.” is one of the most obscene statements I have ever read. This means over five hundred thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools has been obtained for virtually nothing. The Barnaby Joyces of this world should be hung drawn and quartered very, very slowly. Because the sum of $37,000 was but a down-payment of the full sum given to various individuals in the QLD government. Anna Bligh and all her predecessors and fellow premiers, are worse than a grotesque joke.

Irrigating Cooper’s Ck? That really would be environmental pornography…but the Qld. Govt is quite capable of rooting the river, filming the action and selling it as sustainable procreation. “Triumph of the Gonads”, perhaps.

Burke and Wills did not respond before deadline.

As a result of his optimistic account there was a rush of applications for leases in this ‘promised land’. It was not long, however, before these pioneers of the north were sending back gloomy reports of barren, waterless and useless tracts of land. http://www.goyder.sa.gov.au

Cubbie was a rort. Cotton is a rort. Hemp could be grown at a tenth of the cost, on a tenth of the water, to produce a hundred-fold more useful product.

“For his pains, the industrious Goyder was subjected to a barrage of derision. His early trips to the mid-north to survey, rate and value land suitable for cultivation had been vehemently opposed by a group of wealthy and influential pastoralists, who, prior to the valuations, ran their sheep in the colony’s northerly expanses at minimal cost. Once the Line was declared, Goyder was set upon by lobbying farmers. Not content with the areas released for selection, the farmers argued that neither government nor Goyder should act as an impediment to settlement. They denounced the Line as a “theoretical bauble,” pointing out that similar lines drawn across the colony in previous years had all been abandoned. And in any case, they argued, rain followed the plough.”

What’s changed?

Perhaps Bill Heffernan has a little pagan templet to George in his loungeroom….

They get rich using OPM … and then exit when the turd hits the turbine.

You can hardly blame Cubby Station and its owners because of the lack of governmental management of water resources. Their owners have two act in their own and their investors interests and in the community that they support around them, which by all accounts they do honourably.

Moreover, they provide good employment for a significant number of the local aboriginal community. More generally, you cannot blame the bush for looking after its own because since when did the elite in Canberra and Brisbane look out from them?

Bernard Keane certainly does not represent them and the irony and hypocrisy as uses Senator Heffernan who does indeed know more about water resource in this country than almost any other politician must add insult to injury.

It must be the first time, I’ve ever heard Bernard Keane say something positive about Bill Heffernan!

The chief of staff of the government most responsible for this catastrophic abuse of water resources is now Prime Minister and Bernard Keane is merely but one of his media sycophants.

Certainly Cubbie Station was bound to fall on its own sword sooner or later, but I would love to see an article about Victoria’s even greater barbarism on almost everything. Not to mention the complete misuse of water by John Brumby, and his government, over an eleven or more year period which has seen the death of the MDB. As a side issue mention should be made of the wildly expensive desalination plant, which would never have been needed if it had been made mandatory for all buildings to have water tanks.

Now comes the news that vast areas of Gippsland are occupied by houses set at about waterline. Already, people are being told to rebuild on higher land. But the state government thinks it doesn’t matter if the sea swallows up the desalination plant. I don’t think it matters either. Doubtless for different reasons.

Unfortunately politics and sustainable resource management do not mix. The environment generally comes out a poor loser, because the con artists have deeper pockets than the environmentalists.

Over committal of water resources is endemic , and the lack of coordination and agreement by State and Federal government across the country is a national disgrace.

Cronyism is rife, and corrupt practices of the “brown bag” variety as well as looking after mates is endemic. It has been observed that looking for integrity in politics is like looking for virtue in the whorehouse and the analogy is appropriate (with apologies to the whores for the odious comparison).

Will this be “the catalys for the Queensland Government to take a serious look at how it manages water”? Not a chance.

When are we going to look at the use of underground water in the same light as river water.

We should be doing it now.

We won’t though because people think by closing down some of these schemes we are costing farmers their livelihood. That is not true ,they have enjoyed the benifits of farming these areas for long enough to reap a reward.

I cannot understand why farmers in the Griffith/Leeton area are not calling for the cancelling of the large Hillston pumping licences. They should be because this will eventually lead to the failure of the MIA and their future.