Drought is drought. Climate change is climate change. There is no connection between the two. El Ninio and La Nina are still alive and well, hence the drought. These phenomena have been doing the job long before climate change occurred. Australia always has had and always will have droughts; it is criminal that successive federal governments have totally ignored the fact.

Apart from that point, I agree with Mr. Haigh: control of water should be wrested from the states, particularly the rogue administrations of Victoria and Queensland whose misuse of water is mindboggling.

The management of water in Australia must be controlled by the Federal Government but, with Labor in all states but one – and WA doesn’t use the water the rest of us fight over – it’s very unlikely that there will be a federal take over any times soon.

Howard said he intended to do it. I think Rudd said something about 2011, but there is no firm commitment, and Victoria seems to be still calling the tune.

In the meantime, the idiots in both state and federal government are calling for more growth and larger populations when we do not have the water to sustain the people and industries we have.

Mr Right is so wrong!
Dry weather is intimately connected with global warming and climate change. The word "drought" implies a temporary period of dryness. But with global warming, the change in sea temperatures. and hence in patterns of upswelling of cold water - results in changed wind and rainfall patterns - the El Nino effect.
Where a drought might last for 2 years, Australia can now expect dry weather in some areas that will be virtually permanent - "droughts" lasting for 10 years become a regular dryness.

Bruce Haigh has courageously said it like it is - with the Australia- wide history and current practice of mismanagement of our precious water basins.
But let's not forget Australia's greatest water resource, the Great Artesian Basin, from which BHPBilliton's Olympic Dam's copper and uranium mine at Roxby Downs takes 33 million litres a day. The proposed future take would see the company extracting more than 150 million litres a day - around a third of the artesian water that flows into South Australia.
And BHPB guzzles this water for no fee!
Add to this guzzling of water the inevitable leaching of radioactive materials into the GAB - which will result in a virtually permananet pollution. Christina Macpherson www.antinuclear.net

I must correct myself - Mr Right is not so wrong, about everything.
Indeed - he is so RIGHT about Australia not needing more growth and larger populations.
Perhaps the present financial chaos will eventually cause us to change the prevailing religion of growth, consumerism, and so-called "progress", and to aim for a more rational conserver society.
Christina macpherson www.antinuclear.net

please can we agree on the terms [droudt is a normal cycle]
climate change is normal [we have winter /summer
we have hot and cold

the earth is moving into a hot spot [or a cold spot]
but know the sun puts more heat into the earth in one day [than a year of mans polutions

but what is polution? [certainly not carbon, we breath it in [drink it in our softdrink and the plants convert it into timber [celulite]
in time it becomes coal or crude oil etc

polution is breathing in clorine [and drinking it in our water [along with flueride
[a known carconogen]flueride being a product with no other use from the petro chemical refining process ,

totally poisenous
yet flueride is any metal flueirised [oxydised]out of the refining process

water is the means to control us further[so much gets wasted to cool the water heated up by the coal
[=so much more is wasted to stop dust polution ,so we have clean coal to send overseas
[yet another buzz word, clean coal]

is clean coal dirty coal washed clean?

refining petro chemical [and coal based generation] use massive ammounts [and polute massive ammounts of our water

[ok not our water since states gave it away[after the councils put in water meters! USING OUR RATES MONEYS]

when people going to wake up to buzz words
and making the REAL abuser's pay

we dont need petro chemical [nor coal generation]
the average mine uses billion's of liters of water each week FOR FREE]
make coal pay its way[double or tripple its price[same with petrol

lump[ insurance tolls roaD TAX ETC INTO ONE FUEL LEVY
[i just need to get the right buzz words

water warming?[compression heats water most efficiently]
evaporation [into the sky] cools it faster

tax REAL POLUTION

water belongs to ALL OF US
even gods rivers and lakes ,seas and trees and fishes, gods animal and man [kinds] ,those using below their share get it for free
those using more pay double[but not for private proffit]nor favouritism nor licence

Nicely written article and about time for some clear speaking.
Drought is indeed the wrong word, as are the weasel words "climate change" (as dictacted to the UN by the US because "Global Warming" was too scary. "Man made forced rapid change" would be more honest description of what is ocurring)
Corruption should never be underestimated in state politics: We know that Victoria and Qld are being run by thugs behind the scenes so the sooner the MDB is administered by a federal agency the better.
(Who controls the agency is a big issue)
The ability of large corperations to recieve free water while households pay more and more is a disgrace too.
I can see an upcoming election being fought around these issues. It will take more of a disaster than the death of the Murray (!) to stop the rot.

Yes, yes and yes,

The answer is not state and the answer is not yet federal, but Greens MP Parnell and Independant again in SA, Nick Xenophon - straight speaking good guys on the side of PEOPLE and the ENVIRONment VERSUS in the other corner Corp-orate Greed, proudly sponsored and endorsed by the Australian Government.

The truth is that we need to reform our government...the government know this but are not telling..its a game of give and take, but the more people know and the more supported the smart candidates in the political industry, more graceful transition and change and less stress on everyone including the environment.

The government must be responsible to the people of Australia, which implies they must be responsible for the environment in which they live..it would be a nice change?

Came across this interesting item:

It is important that all Australians leave no stone unturned in a quest to understand both the importance and origin of the Great Artesian Basin, which many are now hailing as our possible saviour. Is it already too late? Is the Basin along with underground streams, already doomed, poisoned, exhausted?

Queenslanders in particular would do well to pay more attention to the Basin and it's structure. They may well discover where their water is going!

Professor Endersbee delivers this study. …..”In two previous papers in Focus on the Great Artesian Basin (see references) I put forward my view that the present official concept of recharging of the Basin from surface waters was incorrect. At the time I was not certain as to the actual origin of the waters, only that recharging from surface waters was a physical impossibility.

My continuing studies set me on a quest for the source of the waters…………” (Well worth the read)

http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=614

Drought or no drought, we need more water storage as our population grows. I agree with the view the state governments are corrupt when they do deals with the greens who are such a minority to lock up the people's assets for short term political gain - shame!

I pay my taxes and it is the duty of governments to supply me with as much water as I need, also a health system, roads and public transport - not to try to make me change my habits to suit their political dealings, duty do you hear!

That's what government do, they serve the people, not themselves or manipulate people to stay in power. The future of this country will have a view of history that will not be kind to current governments I suspect.

Mr Right is right.

(one under god, did you know that engineers invented a marvelous tool, the spellchecker. Compose your post in a word processing package and it will help with grammar as well - then paste it to the Edit Comment field here. I can't read your posts they are such a mess so I don't know if you're trying to be clever or primitive. If you have a point I'm afraid no one is going to get it if you don't learn to communicate, help is available.)

rpg an insightfull comment

does this wonderous tool put vowels in the right place [put the exclamation points etc in their proper context] put in questionmarks where questions marks are 'supposed' to be
or make an illiterate sound literate

i am only what i am
[god forbid spell check make me decieve people to think me more clever than i really am ,i put the facts out there HOPING some intelligent person puts it more literatly [or corrects me]

[and frankly if no one reads what i say
it matters not in the least]

i am responding as well as i can
,with what god saw fit for me to know

if i spelled things perfectly [which spelling measure do i use [the confangled yanki spelling or the british spell ,check

im australian
i reflect the education my govt chose to give me

i am only in my later years able to relise we are all dumbed down as a deliberated policy ,
that passing for education is worthy of a topic all to itself ,

if those who had wise teachers and parents who knew the value of education then i would be much like those who critisize others unthinkingly for their illlieracy

just as they
[the educated literatie] ,WHO unthinkingly let govt steal our water [and our other public assets [now made private]

i could easilly respond to others points by claiming not to get a single point that their literate opinion asages [and blame their spell checking ,or education level when i cant rebut

[instead of responding to the POSTED topic ,
but see [realise] that is the best you get
cause its the best i am able to do

when all the sites ban bad spelling then i guess my role is done,
im not enjoying teaching basic's of life reality to those smarter than i

[who should have done their own fact checking
or learned it in school]

often spell check gives me only two wrong words to chose from
but despite being off topic you are forming a con census

so, what are you going to do about it?

lie on the floor, kick your heels, hold your breath till you're red of face?

these 'gummint orter' pieces are pathetic. you pretend you're a citizen, pretend the world cares what you think, hit 'publish' and go back to the racing form with a glow of accomplishment.

when you can explain just how your words excite, organize and unite the people to act through citizen initiative, i'll think about paying attention to your argument. until then...

you are not a citizen, you are a tax cow.

Queensland labor fails again, just consider only one the the failures "Nine" $9 billion ($9000,000,000+interest) on a water pipeline! because they could not make decisions on dams,to deal with the drought they knew was coming, and not honest enough to act on ,the same on transport etc. All because they would do and say anything to stay in power, and now they are going to regulate the shoveling of this recycled water down our throats, how long can the easy going Australian bare this decision delinquent, big spending,over regulating, greedy taxing,inflation creating labor/green monstrosity.

Yes drought is a dirty word today , climate change is much nicer , the same as a gay person is no longer happy and the stork no longer
delivers the babies and the world is not flat any more. Such a stimulating thoughtful debate.

I am at a loss to understand Bruce Haigh's complete opposition to any market based solutions to water management.

Allowing farmers to trade their water allocations simply ensures that the water is used most efficiently. Eg. take this simple example: There are two apple farmers using a total of 2 litres (1L each) of water from a river. Farmer A produces 5 apples from each L, while farmer B only produces 1.

The government decides 2L is unsustainable and caps total use at 1L. If it creates a market for the use of that water, the more efficient farmer can outbid the less efficient farmer for the right to use water until the marginal benefit is equal. Thus water use has been reduced at the least cost in terms of output. Moreover, the higher price gives an incentive for improvements in water efficiency.

If the government tries to allocate water by other means it will face many problems. If each farmer is given the same amount of water then total output will be lower and there will be a reduced incentive to use water efficiently. If the government tries to allocate water entitlements according to efficiency of use, it incurs massive administrative problems; the farmers have more knowledge about how efficient their water use is than the government. Trying to gain this information will be incredibly costly (especially if there are 1000's of farmers growing different products, some of which do not bring a steady return each year) and unlikely to ever be entirely successful.

A market is merely a forum for humans to exchange goods and services. Voluntary trade is by definition mutually beneficial - otherwise it would not occur. We can set it up in any way we want. It is therefore nothing to be afraid of. Evil corporations in black vans will not come in and ruin our lives if we allow farmers to trade water