Michael you have hit the nail on the head - couldn't agree more.

It is vital the $3.1 billion worth of water entitlements the Rudd Government is hell bent on buying is properly targeted and that the government has a serious look at how this will affect rural communities already reeling from zero allocations and the drought.

It is a waste of everyone's time and money if the buybacks are not targeted and they should only be used as a last resort after infrastructure upgrades are completed, especially the on-farm upgrades which are vital to securing our countries food security.

The point that "the only thing that can save both the Basin's health and its farmers is rain" is valid.

The problem is that too much planning is based on totally outdated climate figures which are, as a result of global warming, of no validity whatsoever.

The reality is that we are going through a sequence of metastable climate states, with new ones reached in 1976, 1998 and 2006.

With each successive state, the southern winter rainbelt that once watered the southern MDB, is disappearing.

Sooner or later (probably sooner) it will go for good.

No matter what each year bring, the only result we should be planning for is zero runoff in the southern MDB and highly limited (as always) in the northern basin.

That will mean that all the limited rain we can plan for must be allocated to ecosystems and farming in the Basin phased out - the sooner the better.

Looked at over 150 years of records there is a pattern of recurring drought and above average rainfall.

By taking each decade as a unit it's obvious that 1850s =1950s, and 1870s=1970s (wettest years) and the great droughts of the 1900s are replicating themselves now.

The good news historically is that the next decade is one of the wet ones.

These drought periods are not a new occurrence, the terrible droughts of 1900-1910 and even worse the 1940-1950 would equal any period of our "climate warming" phase.

I heard somewhere that rainfall in the MVB has fallen by 30% since the 1950s; considering that the '50s had an above average of 30% for the period 1951-1960 this would seem a normal pattern.

Looking at the period 1900 to 1950 would show that rainfall (surprise, surprise) hasn't varied much at all; what has changed is the usage of its water.

Any buy back of water entitlement should be "retired" and not allocated otherwise it's still over committing a resource that's not actually there.

Australia's major cities do not recycle any significant amount of water.

There have been no new large water storages[dams] built to feed these cities for over 20 years.

The size of these cities has more than doubled in the last 20 years.

If you increase usage but do not increase supply what happens?

Drought or no drought you have a problem.

CSIRO agres with me that irrigation by strategically placed desalination units from W.A. coast through the West Coast of South Australia would remove forever the drought shadow responsible for low rainfall in Murray/Darling Basin.

Cheers Michael,

The only thing the feds have bought is air. They have not got a plan, and the States still control water resources. Every party to the new "agreement (Lol)" has right of veto. The only security they can provide is increased security to irrigators, as they have no water to provide to rivers, no control of assetts and no influence on allocation models.

There is a lot of hype and rhetoric among the "deals" and spending going on, hailing shares for the "environment (Lol)", only one thing is certain, and that is rivers are not getting extra water (even if it rains!).

Regards Murray.

we produce more than we need in the food sector and are a net exporter of agricultural produce. Upgrades should anly happen if it is going to guarentee a return of water to the sytem. If the taxpayer funds an upgrade to keep alive an ineffecient irrigation business, then the greengrocer put out of business by the supermarket should be funded to survive as well.