When our new environment minister, Sussan Ley, suggested last week that farmers in the Murray-Darling Basin should be allowed to "borrow" water intended for maintaining the health of the basin's ecosystem, she faithfully applied the lessons of this year's federal and state elections in the region of her rural NSW seat of Farrer.
Like the Liberal governments in each of those elections, Ms Ley was returned to office - but she also saw dramatic swings away from the Coalition in her constituency, swings that have a great deal to do with farmers who feel that there is no justice for them in the current dispensation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and its allocation of flows to the environment. For farmers in the upstream states of Queensland and NSW who depend on irrigation, the need to "Pause the Plan" has become an article of faith as the current drought has bitten.
Read the Editorial from The Age - “Murray-Darling consensus needed after years of governments muddying waters."
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