Your remark about those kangaroos eating all your vegetation was telling: Damn those kangaroos! It would be good if you could shoot them all.

The bucket story should be emailed to all the politicians bent on preserving 'wooden bucket manufacturers'.

Wouldn't it be nice that if after the next inevitable drought or flood, or unfair environmental regulation change, that 'bucket manufacturers' on the land were assisted to exit with dignity with funding now confined to retraining and relocation.

We have had the victim mentality in this country operating for far too long (aboriginals, manufacturers, trade unions and farmers) with far too much sympathy aimed at preserving rather than adjusting to today's 'plastic bucket' world.

Just make sure you send the bucket story to the Auto Unions (Mitsubishi bail-out) the Transport Unions (urban transit subsidies), The IT industry (outsourcing components), and all those quangos on the public drip.

Just more evidence from Shonga, Maddern, Ludwig, Remco and Hedgehog to remind folks in the regions that the urban public has lost the most important attribute of participants in a democracy. That is, the capacity to empathise with others of different backgrounds.

Without this capacity to understand the needs of diverse communities and occupations, the city has squandered its right to govern the regional minority. The regional economic models demonstrate that capital cities take a free ride on the productive capacity of the regions. And we get nothing but ignorance and contempt in return.

So keep it up fellas, every time you open your mouth you bring forward the day when we have our own state capital in our own region, distributing our own full share of GST funds on our own priorities.

Perseus, you sound like some of those religious minorities that need to carve out a niche for themselves where none really exists except in their heads. The rural sector is comprised of people going about their own business, just like the rest of the country and the only difference being that they have their own political representation (the Nationals) that by their efforts to differentiate, alienate the country from the rest of us (and often succeed with the concessions they manage to squeeze out out the rest of the country with sob stories and obfuscations).

The country people have made a choice not to work in the cities and so assume the risks and the costs and the deprivations. It was THEIR choice to live there. Should the urbanites now be periodically be called upon to subsidise their choice when the weather turns against them next time? Should urbanites make concessions in environmental laws acknowledging the growing awareness of the mess the land, the waters etc are in?

We live in a country of free choice. If you cant hack it, move and that's where the government (ie us taxpayers) could step in: to help those that can not handle the conditions, the deprivations, the costs, the droughts, the environmental initiatives.

We have to live in today and not try to hold onto the past and slow the shifts that are necessary. This is a country of freedoms and free choice but some seem to want to be protected and subsidised.

Perseus, can u explain to me why city bound manufacturing or waterside workers would have any sympathies for Farmers who through thier union the National Farmers Federation, extensively fund legal and political attacks upon ordinary working people. If Farmers really thought about it, they would be far better off forming alliances with Labour unions.

Perseus, good to hear some sanity in here.

The callousness of some people in this forum to the plight of farmers is quite startling. The 'plight of the worker' with his regular job, assurances against being sacked, and dozens of legal entitlements seems to garnish sympathy, but the 'plight of the farmer', who provides proportionally more to our economy than all but miners, and yet is attacked more by central government and dependant on good weather, is not just ignored, but provokes anger and uncharitable rage.

I think having two new states: New England, North-East NSW down to Newcastle, and with Bogan river on the west as its boundary; and Riverina, Between the Murray and Lachlan, with the Eden area added on to make up numbers - able to bring in the ACT into the state to boost numbers -, would both be beneficial to those two regions economically. I do, however, wonder whether it is a good idea. Loosing those two regions would render us poor conservatives (poor as in pitiable, rather than economically poor) in Sydney with no chance at winning the state election. I think the solution would be to win the election, rather than seek a new state. The new state idea has always bloomed at times of adversity... the River state proposed during Lang's grip over NSW, and New England during the 60's (can't remember the accompanying adversity).

Brogdan could have done it, because he could have snagged the doctors' wives with his youth and wet liberalism. Debnan will be trying to snare a different group, poorer and more conservative, and he might well succeed due to Labor's attempts to shoot itself in the foot.

They have to be hush-hush about environmental policy before the election, and first thing when elected, clear land clearing legislation.