Renowned physicist Albert Einstein aptly put it once, that insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. If one the smartest people to have ever lived is saying this, then surely it shouldn't be too much to expect our governments to follow the same suit.
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When it comes to water and farmers, governments of the day don't seem to learn from previous mistakes.
Politicians are always happy to point the finger at their predecessors and blame the previous government for the terrible mess that's been left behind. But yet again, like the movie Groundhog Day, it's like they are on repeat and just follow down the same path to do the very same thing as those that have gone before them. This is evident when it comes to water.
The 2008 buybacks decimated basin communities across the state, yet to appease the Green vote, this federal Labor government is again pushing ahead with more buybacks. The first buybacks by the Labor government totalled 26 gigalitres, costing $205 million of taxpayer money.
With consumers already feeling the pinch at the supermarket checkout, this is 26 gigalitres that won't be used for food and fibre production, which could see further price rises.
The government said there could be "unintended social and economic impacts as the result of water recovery" and that Water Minister Tanya Plibersek should consider these to lessen the effects.
But Ms Plibersek has one goal; to have numbers on a page that say the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is complete. This is despite communities along the Barwon-Darling river system still feeling the impacts of the 2008 buybacks.
Now a connectivity report for the system has recommended regulated water sharing plans have a continual end-of-system flow requirement, firstly through the restriction of supplementary water take and floodplain harvesting. This is despite the interim report saying "limitations of the models make it difficult to accurately assess the potential impacts" these recommendations would have.
One sure impact would be irrigation farmers reducing production, which will see job losses. These workers could then be forced to leave the area taking their family with them. This leaves a massive hole in these communities who are yet again left behind to pick up the pieces.
