The governments of the Murray Darling should be condemned for the way they go about buying water from willing sellers in the worst drought Australia has seen in recorded history! What willing sellers? The poor bastards are broke for Christ's sake! The black suits wonder about with their carpetbags offering a pitance for a livelyhood with the cunning of a rat. It's all a dark secret in the name of the nation. At some stage soon food will be more important than anything else. The farm sector kept Australia out of the red last quarter, in this bloody horrible drought. When will SA give up the water that was allocated to it in 1900 for the navigation of paddlesteamers. Hey, the paddlesteamers were beaten by rail in 1930 for efficiency. This 1000 gigs could be stored in snowy hydro dams until the next drought, if we ever get out of this one.

The ecology of the Murray is severely stressed, and according the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, without improved water flows onto the floodplains, many forests could be lost. Properties need to be bought if necessary and the river needs to be revegetated. We can't let the Murray die! This is the life-blood of Victoria and South Australia's food producing areas! Logging of state forests must stop, and new National Parks created along the Murray River before it dries! Our forests form water collection areas, and with less and less forests and eco-damage, the dangers of ruining a natural resource are very real and dangerous. Public land that is not "used" is often undervalued. However, these areas create a natural buffer for our biodiversity, with landscape and wildlife habitat preservation. The red river gums are an integral part of the river ecology and they need to be restored. Some areas need to be "locked up" into new and existing National Parks. Farming properties need to be smaller, more finely-tuned and sustainable. We cannot keep taking from our environment and quantifying it in monetary terms without further disturbances to ecological balance, especially in a time of climate change.

More than 60% of our red meat is exported, and over 50% of our dairy products. These products rely heavily on our water, and it is depleting. Agriculture has been supporting our GDP for too long, and it is proving to be unsustainable. Our food bowl should be for us, not for exports. Too much virtual water is going overseas.

Bob, I think you need to look at a few facts. You are right in one sense, the dairy industry is the biggest user of water in the country by a long way. More than rice & cotton combined, I believe, in recent years. But beef is primarily produced on rangeland pastures in this country. Yes there is a bit comes out of feedlots where irrigated feed is used, but on a tonnage basis, the bulk is pasture-fed. I think it is a bit rich to paint all irrigation as un-sustainable. Certainly there are problems with some elements of current practice (like 70% of the Murray being allowed for extraction, lack of recycling of tail-water, etc.) but in Australia we produce 30% of our primary produce off about 2% of our land, as a result of irrigation. All you propose is good 'fuzzy, warm' stuff that I'm sure is common in urban Australia, but it's not quite as simple as you think.