Bernard Hinchcliffe, Mullumbimby
If you look at the world, you will find that the most populated parts are between mountain ranges and delta regions. An example would be India.
They get three months of 24/7 rain in the wet season, June to August. Then in November to January they get heavy snow falls in the Himalayas, which thaw in March to May. The peasants figured out thousands of years ago, that you could heavily irrigate all year round.
Australia has no high mountain ranges, which means we just rely on rainfall. If we start heavily irrigating again we will run out of water. People wonder why the First Nation’s people never practised irrigation. Doesn’t take an Einstein to figure this out. So Mr Barnaby, if you want to save your cattle industry, just ban heavy irrigation practices.
Too late for Barnaby…. he has already finished stuffing it up as Agriculture Minister by approving the over-allocation water to all of the top three of the thirstiest industries: coal mines (especially those on the inland rivers), and the massive water-intensive cotton and rice farms on the margins of driest arable parts of the driest continent. And removing the requirement for flow calculations to include climate change-based reduction scenarios. Of course it would exceed ACTUAL flows. Blind Freddie could see that! And then there was no regulation of allocation.
Barnaby showed he had no regard for – let alone allocations – domestic residential use, environmental flows, or the great number of less intensive agricultural uses the inland rivers formerly supported….. Of course they’re all less profitable, and not major LNP donors like mining and agribusinesses are they? The whole water allocation system was corrupt waaaay before the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, with over 500% of flows in the Bogan and Darling already allocated by former NSW Deputy Premier, Nationals Leader and (laughably) Water Resources Minister Wal Murray as far back as the early 1990s.
Now both Scummo and Gladys, fresh from their successes in removing mandatory public consultation processes and appeal rights against coal mining, are currently moving towards removing water considerations from the environmental impact assessments for future coal mines & CSG ventures. Un-be-f____-lieveable!!
All of this can’t just be rooted in stupidity, so it must be corruption. Follow the money. The sooner there is a Federal ICAC the better!