The Murray Darling Daring basin plan, has panned out to be an exact look alike of all other Government meddling.

The Aboriginal industry which collects forty billions pa and still leaves aboriginals living in abject poverty in rural ghettos.
The NBN white elephant fiasco.
The NDS which panders beautifully to the notorious medical industry, leading to wealthy doctors and other service medics, becoming wealthier by the day, as the disabled linger in the background, begging for treatment and services, and generally ignored.

And sadly still, the Govermrnt brand of dogs breakfast for the rich and famous, is usurped only by the private enterprise rip-offs of the insurance industry, where a five hundred dollar bribe is payable towards their bottom line pa, for roadusing suckers to register for the rort of motoring.
Out of that windfall, a merger two percent is outlayed for successful claims. All Government backed.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, thieving politicians the like of Barnaby Joyce, continue to grin for the camera over the crimes his lot were involved in over water buy backs.

I don't see much future for this country under this regime of waste and corruption.

Dan

Max forgot another reason SA doesn't want to stop sucking water out of the northern states for their artificial fresh water lakes.

There is a huge dairy, & farming industry around the lakes, which requires extensive water for irrigation. It is very cheap for South Australia to supply this irrigation water by having these estuaries full of fresh water rather than natural salty water.

Return the lakes to their natural state, & this irrigation water would have to be supplied by a ditch & pipe network, that would cost money to build & maintain. While the northern states are stupid enough to let South Australia rip off their water resources to give them free water distribution, they will continue to do this.

I can't imagine how anyone who claims to be green is not down there protesting about these artificial lakes destroying the estuarine environment.

The only times that SA gets a mention is when the eastern states feel like a whine. Actually, it's not just SA, it's also NT and WA: anywhere west of the Great Divide. The Australian Environment Foundation and Max Rheese and the eastern states can get nicked.

Good article. The whole system below the river should be returned to natural conditions, meaning an open mouth to the sea. If the lake system becomes saline, so be it. Some farmers will need to be compensated but the cost will be minor compared to the overall environmental and economic gains.

People keen on returning the Murray to "natural conditions" clearly don't know that that would mean NO water in the river in SA in dry periods. There are plenty of photographs available showing paddle steamers high and dry when things were 'nice and natural'.

Poor, poor South Australia is owed a living from federal taxpayer money be it in water or subsidised shipyards.

The Federal Government has given Adelaide approximately $80 Billion in naval shipbuilding projects. This buys the Government votes = a few Federal electorates.

This is even though shipbuilding in Adelaide is far less efficient than doing so in Victorian and Western Australian shipyards.

But what's a few odd $10s Billions of taxpayers' money?

SA has a massive sense of entitlement, to wit having the world's biggest uranium deposit at Roxby Downs yet kidding themselves that batteries will run the state. Just today I got an email saying some rels were going to visit Meningie on the lower lakes. I point out were it not for the 1930s barrages if would be as salty as the sea.

The 900 GL or whatever that evaporates from Lakes Alexandrina and Albert must require an environmental flow of 900/365 nearly 3 GL per day. Mainly so caravanners can sit under willow trees while upstream farmers lose their livelihoods. Open the barrages, put a salt barrier weir and lock on the river channel near Wellington, pipe fresh water from upstream (this is already done to some extent) and let the lakes become salty. Maybe dredge a channel for boat navigation and allow floodwater to escape.

Note the Colorado River, architect of the Grand Canyon, barely makes it to sea. Forget movies about pelicans the actual Coorong is a separate lagoon not part of the lakes. The Murray lakes barrages are about 75cm higher than the 1930 sea level and will be overwhelmed later this century if SLR predictions are correct.

If they have MORE? We will have less! If the environment has more, everyone else including irrigation dependant will have less. And as we know the water barons who somehow acquired the people's property, i.e., water that fell free for all from the sky!

And since privatised at the behest of government, subject to endless theft by those who were trusted with unmonitored extractions?

The reason why river water is cheaper for S.A., is their privatised, passed on, power costs, reportedly the highest in the world? And the power usage of last century's, desalination.

This on an island continent surrounded by inexhaustible seawater and blessed with copious supplies of still unused thorium. MSR thorium coupled to deionisation dialysis desalination. And nobody needs worry ever again about the cost of water or power!

And that my fine feathered friends is the nub of the problem and just how many powerful fat cats, with the ear of government would be hurt by either or indeed if rolled out as government funded and facilitated, employee-owned co-ops, able to compete like any other free market private enterprise business model, for market share!

And while that would quite massively boost the local economy, the incomes of primary producers, the average Aussie and many processors and manufacturers!

It would harm the business model of the parasite class with enough power, wealth and political clout, to buy alternative incomes that best suit their bottom line and so-called sovereign risk!

Understand yet, genius?
Alan B.

SA is no sillier than the rest of Australia when it comes to a refusal to go nuclear; but how does using batteries mean we have a “sense of entitlement”? It doesn’t have any relationship, of course, so no need to answer. The batteries are just another stupidity left over from the previous socialist government, which we South Australians will pay for and suffer blackouts over - not you whingeing easterners and apple-growers.

I’m not sure how many submarines have been built in WA and Vic to PROVE their greater efficiency over SA, plantagenent , but then, I might be just as ignorant of those states as you and other ‘foreigners’ are about SA.

The only times that SA gets a mention is when the eastern states feel like a whine. Actually, it's not just SA, it's also NT and WA: anywhere west of the Great Divide. The Australian Environment Foundation and Max Rheese and the eastern states can get nicked.

Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 18 June 2019 10:15:19 AM

Careful there old mate, 2 or 3 can play at that game. There is no reason other than charity & a sense of fairness that the eastern states let any water down to South Australia. Believe me, the eastern states could use all the water that falls on them, & more profitably for the country & the locals.

Start playing hard ball, & you could find yourselves having to develop your own water. As you admit, it is only the dams & weirs along the rivers in the east, paid for by the east, that actually give SA a reliable river flow.

Perhaps it would be nice if South Australian's said a big THANK YOU.

The Federal Minister for Water and the Environment might take a different view of what the eastern states can do or not do, Hasbeen. We are a Federation, remember. Charity doesn't come into it. And, if the eastern states could use more water, they should be harvesting the regular flood water instead of letting it go to waste and flood country towns. We don't get floods, and very little rain, yet primary industry is our main source of income. I don't see the feds letting your lot piss on us any more than you do now. The 'hard ball' is not coming from our direction. And we don't waste water on cotton and rice.

Is piss what you call all the money electricity & water we send your way mate?