Government, water and an arranged marriage

And sold out once more, yet still you stay.

Is it really any wonder that while your spouse sleeps you pray that the traditional owners of this land will use their skills and profound experience and understanding to help us find solutions to the problems that lie ahead, and at the same time you secretly desire that they rise up and enforce their rights under one of many ratified international treaties available to them?

Out of pure desperation you turn to your faith and seek advice from Father Kevin. You tell him about the links between surface water and ground water. You ask why your spouse and his interstate counterparts are frogmarching the public into dams and desalination plants before fully researching recycling and stormwater harvesting options. And finally you confess your concerns about water over allocation and inefficient irrigation practices. He says he understands. He says, as always, that he will take full responsibility. But has he? Has he taken full responsibility for the preservation of the Great Artesian Basin or the Murray Darling Basin or South Australia's Lower Lakes and the Coorong or for the plight of the people the Lachlan River once supported?

In our dysfunctional marriage with our governments we either concede power or they simply take it from us. Try to protest and you feel you’ve been run over by a truck. But we must do all we can, as loudly and as quickly as we can, and we must all act together. If we think our basic rights will be protected in this marriage by merely casting a vote once every three or four years the truck will keep running over us. Just how long are we willing to stay in this relationship?

A marriage like this requires constant participation. Power is something we confer on government, and if we give them the right to exercise that power we should expect them to observe the co-relative duty to exercise it in our best interests. They don't do that when they don't listen to what we say. And they aren't listening now.