Glen Milne's "The Murray Darling Political Sinkhole"

The Australian’s Glen Milne wrote The Murray Darling Political Sinkhole for the ABC’s The Drum. Many others expressed similar reservation about Milne’s article. Here is my small contribution.

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This is a strange article. Here we are talking about the difficulty of the short term political problems, not the long term sustainability of the Murray-Darling basin. Yes, there are going to be short term political issues. What if the Murray-Darling basin simply continues to get abused? Instead of losing billions of dollars we will lose the eastern seaboard of Australia. Like Australia’s attempt to preserve our fish stocks, sacrifices are going to be made. People will go out of business, towns wills die and people will suffer but it not the Murray-Darling Authority’s fault. It the fault of over optimistic politicians who where finding cheap ways to win rural votes.

Don’t think that I in Perth can be comfortable about water either. Overly optimistic WA State governments have abused the Gnangarra Mound. The Gnangara Mound is an area north of Perth where a large mound of sandy soil reaches an elevation of about 60 metres. It stores about 20 cubic kilometres of fresh water, about one hundred times Perth's current annual water usage. It is currently the single most important source of potable water for the city. Together with the Jandakot Mound south of Perth it supplies about 70% of the city's drinking water. However, it being abused and now is seriously in trouble.