That won't guarantee rain or productive capacity into the future.

What farmers need is help in determining just how we adapt our agricultural systems to remain food productive in a drying future.

Should we be growing crops we aren't familiar with?

GM drought-tolerant crops, perennial pigeon peas, sandalwood, dates, saltbush?

Let's think outside the box ... but more importantly understand that the majority of farmers are in their 50s and the process of change requires a great deal of risk taking and requires energy levels that will certainly not be there.

Unfortunately, after this drought most will have very poor motivation levels.

If the government can't see any answers, what hope have an aging farming population got?

Living on credit because we have off-farm assets just over their requirements.

We have fallen through the cracks. Viable but no cash flow having to liquidate assets to survive. Assets we have put aside for retirement.

Surely this is the time to educate consumers that they have been living in a false paradise of cheap and readily available food on the supermarket shelf and actually need to pay the real cost.

Bear a thought for the grain producers who have been supplying at or below cost of production for many years, effectively subsidising those who use and consume grain.

How about as a total industry called Australian Agriculture we band together and support strong sustainable returns for all sections of the food chain rather than try and knock down those at the primary production end.

Current grain prices are good and if sustained will allow much needed debt reduction and business and infrastructure advancements to be undertaken.

Surely this has to be in everyone's best interest in the long term .

Let's work together !!

Many rural businesses DO NOT recieve EC help and having food on the table does not help when you have lost the roof over your head.

That person no doubt has fixed charges to cover as well, but covers them by liquidating assets etc.

In other words, cuts their losses and moves on.

Why are farmers any different from any other small business?

What's the difference between a lack of rain (an input for a farmer) and a skills shortage (an input for a small business owner)?

If farmers are a special case, let's hear why. If as a nation we have given added weight to this sector of the economy for social or historical reasons, policy makers should be up front about that.

Trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the vast majority of the population who are not farmers, and do not live in the regions, will only result in harm to those who this policy is designed to protect.

There will be a backlash from those who's taxes pay for this, and it won't be pretty to watch.

The communities that have grown around the availability of water will have to think and act fast to survive and mostly, this can happen with the fast rollout of broadband services to enable diversification into a range of small and medium businesses.

Meanwhile, we do have to rethink agriculture and look towards sustainable agriculture, including more production closer to population centres capturing and utilising storm water runoff.

As far as the Snowy Scheme is concerned, the three government shareholders at this stage must legislate to secure a limited market niche for Snowy Hydro energy sales to maintain the system and return the focus to water security.

Over 95% flows from the Snowy are diverted to the west.

Imagine if the reverse situtation if 95% of flows from the Murray and Upper Murrumbidgee were diverted into the lower Snowy for agriculture across southern Victoria!

The reality is that whilst we wonder when it will rain (and indeed light falls are gracing the mountains at this hour - 12 noon 28 September) however be assured that the evaporation rates due to high UV intensity and global warming will mean that the snowpack will not deliver as much water for farming.

The 2003 bushfires (also a signal for global warming wars) significantly damanged the water catchment and critical sphagnum moss communities, further reducing their water retention and reticulation capacity.

The Snowy Scheme is nevertheless vital to our future water security.

The privatisation by stealth of our public water resources, the introduction and over allocation of irrigation licences ostensibly as a revenue raiser for government/s and door opener to water trading and privatisation is a major travesty of water governance and justice.

I would like to call for an immediate audit and tabling in the NSW Government of all water licences issued over the last 5 years and water sales including potentially Halliburton for sequestering in the Adelaide Aquifers if this is indeed what happened.

Transparency and scrutiny is essential.

As far as people in the Snowy Mountains are concerned since Australians stopped the sale of the Scheme, Snowy Hydro transferred massive volumes of water from Lake Eucumbene and Jindabyne and continue to hide - along with the NSW Government - behind the 'commercial in confidence' defence where it is impossible to scrutinise their decisions and behaviour.

This is no longer acceptable and now is the time for reform of water governance, including water committees at the tributary level and representation by communities from the Murray Darling and Snowy on the Snowy Hydro Board and Ministerial Corporation.

The NSW Government fails to respond to requests for such representation and has avoided establishing the Snowy Scientific Committee that would deliver the scientific evidence for decisions pertaining to water releases and environmental flows.

Sadly, many communities now suffer from the water trading regimen that robs natural flows from rivers and wetlands, that does not deliver high security water to permanent plantings, that can and has probably on sold vital water to companies who are able to sequester that water without reference to Australia's food security and without any strategy in place to protect the Sunraysia and other communities.

We need visionary and strategic thinking for water management, not a privatisation agenda masquerading as government and pretending reform.

This can only arise from the grass roots with communities asserting their rights under Section 100 of the Australian Constitution to reasonablel rights to water - residents, farmers and the environment.

The water privatisation agenda has robbed those rights from all of us and pretends to interpret 'reasonable', whereas that is a matter for public discussion and determination, not the prevail of one individual.