< We need a better water plan. Australian governments are dismantling the irrigation sector and this will cost us dearly in the years to come. >

I find it hard to believe that our utterly antisustainability-oriented government could be kowtowing to the green vote to the extent of greatly changing the allocation of water from irrigation into natural flows.

There is another reason for this sort of change – the glaringly obvious disaster that is the Murray / Darling River system… and the now blatantly obvious huge overallocation of water to irrigation.

So, is our government really dismantling the irrigation sector or just striving to bring it in to a more realistic match with the availability of water, when considering the very long dry periods that we are subjected to and the all the negative consequences that starving the natural systems of water has on us humans?

<< …it takes over 1000 tonnes of water a year to feed an Australian. >>

Something like that.

How many more Australians are there every year? And what effect is this having on our overall water-provision ability?

An absolutely enormous effect!

Julian, I’m not sure about the overall tenet of your article regarding irrigation, but I certainly agree that we CRITICALLY DESPERATELY need a government that is fundamentally sustainability-oriented.

Thought provoking and a matter of concern. I agree with the article's content generally, however, Tasmania is possibly the exception to the rule, in that irrigation is being extended here, despite the amount of available rainfall. I am not sure that the Greens would want water diverted from rural entities and into the cities, nor do I agree with the fact that cotton is listed as a good use of water. Plantation trees and cotton, for fibre, are not a good way to use water and that has happened in the Murray-Darling region. Hemp is a far better way of reaching fibre objectives, with far less water use and no chemicals. Hemp is also an excellent fuel producer and food source that could remove our dependancy of meat. Growing hemp (formally a desert plant) also in arid regions is a good way of making use of land that can't be used for anything else. Overall, water is our most valuable resource and it is being wasted, sold overseas and polluted for avarice. It should be a crime to import any food, at the expense of Australian food producers and I personally scan the shelves and read the labels to find locally-produced food. If the carbon tax is doing its job then carbon miles should rule food imports out, shouldn't it?

We do need a far better water plan and a govt not afraid to use its external powers to see we get it.
Wherever ideology replaces pragmatism in policy settings, we will always get inferior outcomes, be it the privatisation of the water market or the destruction of the family farm in favour of tax avoiding corporations.
Or when foreigner carpet baggers/corp raiders and their massive and growing foreign debt burden, which we Australians service every day in every way; threatens to completely wreck what remains of our economy. All with the apparent fawning compliance of govts? Why, we don't even own Vegemite!
The GST was installed largely because off-shoring corporations, took their tax liabilities with them, all while expecting, nay demanding, all the advantages of taxpayer supplied services and or infrastructure?
And at the other end of the political spectrum, green advocates, who seem to believe we can import everything.
That someone somewhere will ensure that their often over-generous salaries are maintained, or social service will continue, as if by magic; or rather, courtesy of the dawn to dark gut bust of the still productive tax paying minority.
And of course they want to mindlessly dam the dams and put trees, cuddly Koalas; and or, forests ahead of the national interest?
Follow green ideology to its logical conclusion, and well, we could become a cash strapped basically bankrupt Greece, or financially crippled Zimbabwe, or a cashless and starving northern Ethiopia?
Follow the fatuous, sell the family silver and the family farm, conservatives?
And we can all become tenants in our own land, paying well over the odds for everything, and where the shrinking privileged few live behind glass topped walls and or razor wire, in a prison of their own making?
And where the rest reside in crime riddled ghettos, the end result of visionless policies; and or, career pollies and their personal needs or desire for personal power, trumping the national interest or pragmatism?
Continued--- Rhrosty.

A better plan would manage the water, from the mountains down to the sea. Millions of small upland dams would be created, sometimes as mandated land care, by private landholders?
These dams would be so sited, as to quite literally force trillions of tons of water into the upland landscape, where it prevents erosion and forces any salt down under an envelope of fresh; and, from where it can gradually seep back into the system, during the expected extended dry times.
This additional water surety would make modest hydro schemes viable, which in turn would further moderate the feast of famine nature of our water supplies.
Of course we must recycle effluent, which can and ought to support increased agriculture.
Why, we can turn our waste into almost costless energy, then use the reclaimed water to grow mop crops like carbon absorbing algae, with the once again recycled water, fed via underground tapes, to maintain orchards, tree crops and or understory, like coffee or blue berry, or in under-glass high density operations which can reclaim most of the evaporate, as pristine potable water etc/etc.
Moreover we can use windmill pumped around salt sea water to grow crops, utilising ag-pipes wrapped in membrane, and where the moisture pulling power of various plants provides a costless reverse osmosis.
Done under glass, the then evaporate can also be recovered as pristine potable water.
But before that, we need to shift our food production to where we still have water, like the North where rainfall can be measured in metres!
Or to tiny Tassie, which has lots of unused excess water capacity, and an economy struggling, simply for want of exportable commodities!
The Murray/Darling, could be rescued and or massively prospered, as a very productive and wealth creating area! If the production paradigm was converted from food production, to very low water use algae farming, and bio-diesel production.
The govt is holding billions, set aside to rescue the Murray, and virtually all the remaining funds ought to be diverted for the aforementioned proposed purpose!
Rhrosty.

Isn't it ironic, as on the one hand we have our PM saying we are well placed to be a global super provider of food, while on the other her government, and states are taking away the most important ingredient in food production, water.

My beef about water is the amount we townies are forced to waste.

We treat all of our water to A grade drinking standard, then we bath in it, we water our gardens with it, wash our cloths, cars, pets, driveways, but we consume less than 2% of what is treated to this standard.

All because we are not allowed to recycle. What a waste!

We should be drawing 100% recycled water from our taps ( fit to consume if boiled) and buy drinking water.

As for coal seam gas water, every drop, once desalinated, should be channeled to the Murray Darling Basin, at least in the downs area.

John Bradfield had the foresight a hundred years ago but as is normal for every generation some academic do-gooders vehemently oppose any sensible, practical solution. We need to recharge the underground water storage that was. The Bradfield scheme would do this with no environmental damage whatsoever, on the contrary.
With the building of so many suburbs we have increased the run-off i.e. loss of enormous amounts of water. We can reverse this by simply filling the natural underground system by reversing the flow of the run-off either by canals or pumps. No major costs involved at all. Just keep the consulting engineers away & it can be done in a wink.