Drought, bushfires, city water shortages and GENUINE climate changes like increased (or DECREASED) Hurricane numbers and intensities are related NOT to OUR usage of the planets resources. They ARE man made, but related to the desire of an elite clique of global businessmen who want to reinvent FEUDALISM by overpopulating nations like Australia so they can reap ever more mobile phone, road and water surcharges and till associated overcrowding and resource shortages frighten us all into a slavery of FEAR.

To stop the drought and all other manner of environmental ills is dead EASY.

Wake up Australia.

All you have to do is demand that CEO salaries in Australia are less than or equal to Government ministers'. And back that up with your investment dollars. No matter how middle or upper class you may aspire to be, Howard's dodgy wealth-on-a-string economics will see you enslaved as sure as if you were a junkie.

If done, I assure every one of you here, except the usual political party forum stackers, that our population and our essential resources will stabilise. And our media frenzied overindulgences will not seem so bad after all.

Most of the pressure of immigration and associated corporate and media MONOPOLY marketed greed will dry up without top echelon incentives to drive it.

The internecine competion destroying our communities will vanish and water will miraculously revert to stable supply. We don't need more immigrants whom Howardesque and Iemmaesque politicians have more respect for than their own constituents

"How amazingly self centred are those that can lay claim to public money to practice their business and seek others to insulate them from the vagaries of the weather."

Actually Remco, to me the word "justice" comes to mind.

Farmers could respond to and plan alot better for droughts,
if it were not for some of the rules that city slickers
impose on us, to protect their own little patches of self interest.

So change the rules and stop holding farmers back from helping
themselves.

Meantime farmers are people too and some help in a time of
need is quite reasonable, given the amount of help constantly
given to city slickers

Continued,

And note that the propaganda that CEOs must have top salaries and bonuses to get the best people for OUR economic salvation is media monopoly lies. Our economic salvation has and will always be in mining. Its been that way since the 70's and everyone knows it. Our rising levels of wealth are a chimera based on more media propaganda. Howard's economic levers including interest rates can change all that in a flash. THAT is what CEOs are paid to do: pervert governments into FUNNELLING human capital and wealh into their global corporations for the personal economic salvation of those politicians and ultimately CEOs themselves.

Paying CEOs high salaries is SO, like standing in a bucket in order to lift ourselves off the ground that old Winston must be belly laughing cigar smoke in his grave right now.

And lastly, if farmers want to end the drought then they must look at the Sea Height Anomaly maps off the coast of NSW. EVERY energy change in our LOCAL REGION ends up affecting the pliant ocean surface in a 1:1 thermodynamic relationship between the land and the sea via the atmosphere. This of course is just the hydrological cycle and I will be presenting more evidence over the next 5 summer months (and into cyclone season) on how cleaning up NSW coastal wstewater emissions from Macleay river, Newy, Sydney, the Gong, Eden and Bega WILL stop drought in NSW by regulating the Hydrological Cycle via its thermodynamic 'gravitas' in the Tasman sea.
Today's SHA map shows just how disorganised (HIGH ENTROPY) the Tasman sea surface is due to wastewater emissions from the ports mentioned:

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1162094532.gif

And remember the second law of thermodynamics: LOW Entropy (all the goodness, heat and moisture in NSW farms) moves towards HIGH Entropy (Tasman Sea).

And It is imperative for all to understand that an end to drought can not even begin to take place until skewed migration into Sydney, the biggest polluter, and biggest CEO profit spinner is wound back to zero and the SYDNEY FULL sign is set up in neon lights.

Interesting angle KAEP, and Remco, but really nothing to offer what is a industry that is world income based( we feed the 3rd factory workers), yet our costs are the result of domestic regulation where the agriculture sector can not access the same markets for their cost of business.
We also have to contend with the urban wage being regulated up with inflation.
This actually means that fuel as related to AWE is no about 75% of what it was in 71 and 80. For a wheat farmer, it is approx 20 times what it was in those times, related to farm gate wheat price the world’s factory workers are able to pay for the product.

Seems your whole argument, if you call statements without facts “arguments”, is based on what SOMEONE else should do, not what needs to be done to remove the discrimination against agriculture, enabling them to put wealth away for droughts.
But then you get welfare, (without asking) as part of govt regulation, and some one has to pay for it, so lets blame the drought when in reality, it’s the highly regulated economy that causing the problem.

As far as these so caused drought payments are concerned, I would be happy for them to never be made, or part of govt policy.
This should also mean that the same free market applies to the urban areas, so no dole, no cash funds when a business does not need your services.
Stuff like that goes with no drought assistance, or we have discrimination.

Bring it on

And the squealing will be heard around the world from urban Australia.

As remco said, you chose to be ? (Unemployed for starters)
Or does it only apply to agriculture?

I find it sad that the drought has become a country v city argument in this thread. The issue is not a football match.

Of course we should help ALL of our countrymen wherever they live. That is the value of a society and it should be the way we measure our success and failure.

While we are content to be run by accountants, economists and lawyers nothing will change

So true Steve.
All we have to agree is that the same regulation's apply to both city and country people.

Things like equal access to govt education and health.
Free trade between city and country
If farmers can’t compete against imported food, then in it comes, even if it has a lower “standard”

Can farmers bring in the cheaper costs from the world market?
No, partly because labour is so protected here, we have this urban myth that they deserve to be paid more than a person overseas to produce a urban product, but still want the right to cheap food, imported if needed.

In reality, the drought is just a distraction from the very high cost of production inflicted on farmers by regulation, the benefit that is mostly urban based.

We have just had a regulated wage rise, at a time when farmers are least able to support the flow on effects from this higher wage costs because inflation went up.

No regulated income increase for regional Australia, it market forces, and world market forces at that.

How about we debate the reason the drought is going to be so bad for farmers, the high cost of business in Australia from regulation for urban benefit.