Correction: I awoke at 5am to the realisation that my multiplier was based on total revenue not net earnings as it should have. The correct loss to the regional economy is 1.2 billion , not 12 billion.

Remco appears to believe that repeating the same diatribe twice makes the argument stronger or, in his case, only half as loopy. For the record, price to earnings multiples are the key tool used in both property markets and stock markets to determine how much one should pay for an income stream. His suggestion that they are obsolete makes it very clear that he has a very limited exposure to either market.

He is an anti-farmer bigot who makes unsubstantiated claims that Australian cows produce only half as much milk as Israeli ones, laments our own farmers supposed lack of value adding and innovation but would be the very first in line to criticise battery beef, pork and chicken.

Farmers in the rest of the world have fought a range of diseases etc caused by excessive growth hormones, incorporating dead chickens in the food rations of pigs and cattle and the rapid spread of viral infections in animals cooped up in barns. Yet, poor old Remco has managed to maintain a classic green antipathy towards Aussie farmers who's cattle roam free, eating only what nature serves them, avoiding disease by adequate spacing and growing as nature intended them to.

But back to the Murray. It was always salty. And if the rainfall of 2003 had taken place in 1788 then the so-called "Mighty Murray" would have been bone dry all the way to Albury. It has been a mighty murray for about 12 weeks in every 4 to 6 years for the past millenia. Get used to it and spare us the urban myths.

Perseus, the Onlineopinion’s assumed Man of la Mancha: “multipliers” are NOT “price earnings ratios”. Multipliers are used by industry groupings to state their impact on a region in a current costing sense. Use them on all sectors and voila, a GDP that becomes 3 times it actually is. They are based on value added calculations and have NOTHING to do with ratios of prices and earnings as you claim. (And, milk yields ARE one-half those of say those of dry Israel (Google it)).

Perseus, rather than continually defending or offending, present a vision or options for better use of a scarce resource that water is. Look at the real long term costs of resisting change to use it better. Look at fuller costings as our grandchildren will have to face.

In the end it is the marketplace, and not a bureaucrat or a Surrey Hills resident, that will determine directions for water use. So water will have to be acknowledged as a commodity that is fully priced and hence tradeable like the land upon which it is applied. It is unconscionable that taxpayers are compelled to spend more than its recreational value, or as a potable water source on the Murray. It would be like a farmer having to pay to clean up an industry site.

Drop your lance and instead present some tangible options for value adding. Read eg. acclaimed international specialist Professor Michael Porters ‘Green and Competitive’ or 'Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship'. Australia can gain a huge quantum by dropping the old school thinking and practices.

Water is a commodity like the land upon which it is employed, and who ever employs it, pays, and no-one else.

‘Multipliers’ belong to the “bags per acre” and “miles per gallon” sector. Old talk, old thinking, that resists innovation and smartness. This is about resource allocation, not subsidies. Not for the “bimbocracies” the Perseus refers to (unless of course they are handouts from taxpayers that he seeks to justify with what he confuses with price earnings ratios.)

Loads of cliches will not mask the fact that you are an economic illiterate, Remco. Multipliers are the routine attributes of economic models and the validity of a model is tested by comparing its results with observed reality. If there is a variance between the models output and observed reality then one must return to the assumed multipliers and correct them until the output is consistent with reality.

But once again you have failed to provide any specific information or examples of multipliers as outdated instruments. Tell that to the boys in Treasury, they may laugh in your face but may just as well cry.

But I will grant you one thing, Remco. You are providing an excellent example of green ignorance that is shaped primarily by bigotry and ideology.

Back to the point. Was the Murray saline prior to 1788? Yes.
Has there been a major improvement in recorded salinity levels over the past 2 decades? Yes.
Was Lake Alexandrina a tidal estuary prior to a failed attempt at providing fresh water to Adelaide? Yes.
Would the current works pass an EIS if they were proposed today? No.
Does the lake now evaporate 1000 gigalitres of valuable fresh water a year when that evaporation once came from sea water? Yes.
Would the removal of the barrages make a greater contribution to restoring ecological values than flushing it with even more fresh water? Yes.

Perseus: I leave you to your self taught and demonstrable falacious self-righteousness. I am most definitely not green, but a progressive inspired by what other countries are achieving. I am however uninspired by the "bags per acre" mendicants you seem to wish to champion on Onlineopinion.

As to this debate, water like land is a commodity that is in short supply and whose quality is under threat. Water should be traded and the market will take care of it without all the economic scull duggery that you wish to promote to seek funding from your termed "bimbocracy". Take your bimbocracy aimed arguments out, and what is left? Just misused data from an aspiring economist.

Water is like land, valuable and in the Murray region, undervalued and misallocated.

Thats fine, Remco, stick to generalities, avoid any specifics and maintain your denigration of the farming community. By the way, you forgot to toss in "sub-human, redneck hillbillies". All this demonising must wear one out at times, I guess.

If one was really interested in gross waste we would be taking a close look at the water supply to those Labor mates in Broken Hill. The nearby lakes hold about 600,000 megalitres in a storage that is not much deeper than 2 metres. Broken Hill only uses about 20,000 megalitres a year and the remainder simply evaporates. So here we have an urban use that is operating a storage at about 4% efficiency.

And the less said about Adelaide the better. Other than the fact that it appears to be the state capital with the highest incidence of rainwater tanks. Some 37% of Adelaide households have tanks, a huge improvement over the rest.