The Murray River isn't as unhealthy as most of the talk and worry around it

Nothing in post election days highlights the basic stupidity of our political leadership than their failure to get under the worshipful talk of "river health" and "environmental flows" ( Toys  from kindergarten ) .
(Tony Burke should sack his script writer for incompetence because none of the environmental issues listed by him on the 25th amount to anything of eco significance - comment added 25th October)

The whole Parliament is going to close down  a great and sustainable ( in the most part ) food growing community because of "river health " worries : - most of which will never be identified because to do so would bring the problems back to earth .----Where they can be exposed.
To talk properly about the risks you have to be able to integrate the physical and chemical relations of soils, salts plants and water ( I just happen to be an expert there)
I'm not going to say here why all the excited pointing of the finger over the overallocation issue is mistargeting and simplistic crap - you will find that out if you look into it properly .While your at it,  journos ask how much money has been wasted by pricing water ( who wins ?) and think about whether the government really knows what it is doing ?  Price everything and you will solve everything -I don't think so ! Its a load of opportunity for stealing by the share market . No wonder some new businesses love working with pollies rather than people- "its so much easier to get money off them".    I suppose- as  long as its not your money,  and you are not accountable for the brilliance of your new ideas ,  and your party says "business knows best"- you can justify even the most stupid arrangements .
So how do you  know who to trust ? And who cares,  really,  not only for the farmers,  but the resilient and safe use and development of the growth potential  in our deserts ?( only a very capable team of applied scientists can----- and you are not hearing from them on the control mediums )
Look at the huge mess Labor governments across the country have created by fiddling with energy and water prices !  ( they would never make one group pay for train tickets now - absolutely noone would pay for a train ride and no more trains would move on those tracks in Melbourne , so they try to make us all pay for their blunders. I think some pollies get their tickets to ride too cheaply too? )
No doubt the greens have got a few more misplaced concreteness words up their sleeves to keep the Media and the public on the lead.  (Words like adaptation, salinity ,  soils acidificaton ( I am an expert there on those and associated subjects)- the greenlabors feel safe using those words because they have managed to silence those who studied to show themselves approved in such areas  )

If only the opposition would dig deeper as Sharman Stone has done this week - calling  greenlabor spade the spade that it is - skin deep and blunt as hell ! After all , the many children in the class need to be reminded  that while civilizations like Babylon went under for ignoring the catchment , erosion and salinity realities of  short term gain--. There is no basis for saying we will ... -
 The many acute and the chronic situations which degrade both soils water and sustainability in the Euphrates River basin ( and in near east etc)   have NOT been addressed there to this day! By contrast ,  we in Australia (used to) review the degradation risk areas regularly  so they don't grow .What we are growing is an unsustainable bureau of worriers and their business partners.
Why don't we stop worrying about our own backyard and help the farmers in unsustainable disaster prone areas - helping people in that way can stop wars,  but no,  our energies are spent closing down things here That great Australain thinker ,Robert Conway talked about "The Great Australian Cringe" - maybe we should apply it to the public defamation of the Great Artesian Basin (plus ) and its power to do good for Australia and the world - cause it can keep doing the great good it has been doing ( with care ) for thousands of years.

After all,  the well drained desert soils we irrigate for many crops in MD can sustain long term production even though salts in them and in the water have to be dealt with thoughtfully.There are soil and lake and irrigation unsustainably questions out there in MD,  but they are and can continue to be addressed at the proper scale--- the local biodiversity scale ( where each system is respected and not treated the same ) .
 Unlike Iraq,  our governments have insisted on vigilance on these unsustainable issues on the agenda/horizon( time to tackle them, not panic the whole of Australia into some quickfix like them have been doing on regular basis )  until the green Labor chooks have captured the public imagination with their grand sky falling "we must get out of here" worries.

Time for someone to just quietly and sensibly tell the truth like Sharman Stone has done this week .Then all the new  greens can stop worrying and talking half truths; hopefully use their welcome interest to  find something to really get their teeth into (like local solutions that let them live their own best history instead of destroying in reaction to cultural excesses and misanthropic prejudice and projection .Global solutions are best left in the hands of someone almost unbelievably capable and clever.
The classic failure of the Government  to over 20 years actually define "environmental flow" is a disgrace that reflects badly on parliament and the current public service as well .

Many of the MD channels MUST dry out to keep the circle of life going in them . The MDC celebration of the flooding of Hattah lakes is probably a proclamation of fools - the  reseeding of soils and salinity tensions can  only come, as with many  estuarine systems do with natural size events ( not the piddling in the stream dreams of the catchment authorities ) that will give long life to the recycle period   Red gum rejuvenation is a process related to the same delicate soil salinity and structural geomorphic elements in the stream system.

As usual,  the graduates  from the school of mere description clearly think the answer is a magic number ( 1.5, 7 or 12 GL).  Even though most of them  flunked maths , they can obviously follow numbers less than a thousand .The public it seems, are destined to allow those who can't really  add up to reign , at least while they let such people and ideas rule and the truth to be hidden.  The thing most people can understand is MEGA talk,  MLitres etc  ,,, and  so,  the discussion has to start there again .
But just like the wild river worriers , the numbers just don't add up to anything remotely related to reality.You need more than a mountain  of numbers ( from say Myki)  to make good decisions - You need someone with predictive skill; less snow; less confusion; more brilliance  .
What difference does it make whether a channel buffer is 300 meters or 500 meters from some earth works . The height of the earthworks, the profile of the channels and the catchment character are  far more important . The Queensland Minister is persuaded by mere numbers- thats pretty understandable for too many of our  Ministers  ; Bigger is better,  according to some .Well it may seem safer to some , but its plain stupid if you do the science; the three dimensions.   The place in the stream system where the works are created also has a huge bearing on risk ; is the channel aggrading or degrading naturally , flood flow patterns etc etc .see the sketch

If the greens and greenlabor are ever going to get out of kindergarten jail they will need to think in three dimensions.
I know what you are thinking - will they ever get out of jail ?,,,,Clearly , until they study things properly they should leave this really important job  to those who practice biodiversity and resilience evaluation in the field ( production ecologists and engineers ) That way the  greens will stop driving the wasting of  huge amounts public money with half baked ideas and dead in the water solutions to those half baked worries.

GreenLabor have cultivated their own simple logic in the public service and the media; They now have only themselves to blame .
Why vote for anyone who can't tell the truth? Why vote for anyone who blatantly misrepresents the science and those who have their feet on the ground  ?