The water war.

The Federal government proposed a plan to " drought proof " Australia. Basically, it calls for the states to give up their rights to the Murray/Darling river system to allow the Feds to spend ten billion dollars over ten years to make improvements and regulate the use of water.
Initially, the four state premiers involved signalled interest and partial agreement, but since then politics has entered the fray. In particular, South Australia's Mike Rann is showing resistance and signalling that he will opose the plan if it inflicts any pain on his state.
Any thinking person knows that to save this river system a lot less water will need to be drawn annually - and that means many marginal irrigation schemes serving arid areas will be closed down. There is an opportunity to re-think farming and abandon what is essentially grazing land being intensively farmed - and move those farms north to where there is water in abundance.
So many farms " just happened ". When this country was settled land was granted without consideration of viability. Now is the time to correct the resulting unsustainability.
Eventually, one of two things will happen. Either the states will cave in and reach agreement, or the Commonwealth will go to court and win the right to manage the river system. In the latter case, there will be a delay that could run to years - and this country will suffer the consequences.
Hopefully, common sense will prevail and a Federal management plan can be implemented with the support of the states. Such an outcome could well become a leading political issue at the Federal election later this year !