When it comes to getting more water for the environment, buying water from farmers is easy.

On paper the Government is quickly able to ratchet up a sizeable amount of licences and entitlements to prove to the morally self-righteous in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra that "finally" someone is acting to get more water to the environment.

But it's a quick fix, or in these times of drought, it's no fix really, because the money is not actually creating more water – it does nothing to make the water pie that so many want a slice from any bigger.

And as Opposition spokesman for the Environment, Greg Hunt, put it recently, buying water licences at the moment is akin to buying air – the Government is buying water on paper only as there is hardly anything physical left for farmers to give over to the environment.

So here's a memo to Penny Wong: we need rain.

In the meantime (and what a mean-time it has been!) Senator Wong and the Federal Government need to heed the example set by farmers, like those cotton growers too often wrongly chastised for being water-guzzling hogs, and get onto farms and do some water saving trials.

Already farmers are using this opportunity while the dams are dry and the tractors are lying idle in the shed to put all those grand ideas they dream about when driving round in circles into practice.

Companies like Murrumbidgee Irrigation have shown Senator Wong the work they've done off their own bat to give themselves more water security and reliability, so she knows it can be done.

There are well-founded fears though that the billions of dollars earmarked for improving irrigation technology will be handed over holus bolus to the State Governments, who are hardly proven money managers these days, to build and restore big-ticket projects that will be delivered just in time for the next election.

But the Government needs to recognise the huge and genuine savings which can be achieved at the farm level and work in partnership with communities – who are so motivated to survive the drought - to deliver savings to farms, communities and the environment, rather than take water and properties permanently out of production, which cause pain and don't deliver real results.