murray-darling

Not enough Murray-Darling to go around

Submitted by Rick Eyre on October 16 2010, 9:00 am

(This item is my contribution to Blog Action Day 2010, whose topic this year is "Water".)

Australia is being confronted with a national dilemma which has a major impact on its society and the environment, and it will take a huge amount of wisdom, courage, co-operation and, yes, pain to reach a stable outcome.

States rights

Submitted by Rick Eyre on April 27 2007, 6:12 am

I have always been a vigorous supporter of the national interest taking precedence over states' rights in this country. The Australian Constitution, while in many ways robust and successful, was also a document of compromise, with the six states ceding specific areas of responsibility to the Commonwealth, and retaining everything else.

Water! Water!

Submitted by Rick Eyre on April 21 2007, 2:38 pm

"...if it doesn't rain in sufficient volume over the next six to eight weeks, there will be no water allocations for irrigation purposes in the [Murray-Darling] Basin."

- John Winston Howard, press conference, 19.4.07

It would be easy to see this as another example of the PM playing politics and thus response with the line Howard to Farmers: Drop Dead. But it's a problem much more genuine and more serious than that.