Faced with extremists siphoning off the National Party vote, the Coalition's standard response is to pork barrel. Stand by for lots of money to be showered on regional NSW and Queensland.
Irrigators have been getting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer handouts to return water to the Murray-Darling when far less expensive, and more effective, ways of achieving the same goal have been ignored by governments.
We're at risk of wasting billions on water infrastructure that isn't needed, the Productivity Commission has said -- repeating previous warnings about how we subsidise unviable irrigation.
If things weren't already terrible for the government on marriage equality, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are front and centre in two other big problems.
The Nationals' war on foreign investment in agriculture continues with more red tape in the water sector.
The government wants to sell its environmental water in the Murray-Darling Basin to cotton farmers. Is this dodgy, or is it market economics to make Adam Smith proud?
Remember the push to save the Murray-Darling Basin? We check in and find the plan is broadly on-track, although two states have just missed a crucial deadline -- a challenge for new federal minister Mark Butler.
The government is to tweak environmental laws to apparently make it easier to block CSG projects. Academics Andrew Macintosh and Richard Denniss on why it's bad policy and won't help the environment.
Barnaby Joyce's views on the Cubby sale and foreign investment are a direct threat to the economy. Tony Abbott should sack him. But he won't.
As 20 weeks of consultations on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan draft end, Crikey examines just how effective this latest lot of public meetings by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has been.