First it was "what's his name", and now Brumby, along with the Victorian Farmers Federation's questionable Leader, placing 'their patch' before the National interest of all Australians.

History shows that the Federal Coalition has approached this pending crisis early, including all States & Territories, and with the National interest at heart, so "God help us" if the Coalition is defeated and all Australia come under a Labor regime.

"The last one out, please turn off the lights".

There is no doubt that Adelaide can tighten its water belt further, however one should remember that it is a very dry place with a big tradition of gardening and suburban food self-sufficiency so Adelaideans are loathe to let their gardens die.

Adelaide currently recycles about 21pc of the 90,000 million litres that goes through its wastewater treatment plants; comfortably the highest of any capital city.

With re-use projects underway Adelaide will increase its total recycling capacity to 45pc.

Just because there is a drought and we have no income does not mean that the farm work stops.

Who the hell has time or qualifications to go get a JOB 'off farm'.

There are no bloody jobs out here - everyone is broke.

We are going broke right now, with high-feed prices, no water, dying stock, no staff available at any price, miles of Government red tape, subsidised imports of very suspect pig meat and sewer fed prawns from anywhere except from Australian farmers.

And yet we still hear this 'level playing field' rubbish.

The only real question left is: how far down into poverty, bankruptcy and shame do you really demand to push me before you have had your fun and call it a day and move onto your next little past time?

I suppose it's time again for more interest rate rises to bolster Government income or are you still pushing the line that it is all for 'my own good'.

Get real - 'Go out and get a job?'

I have a job - 16+ hours a day + sleepless nights and gut wrenching fear watching my farm and family destroyed.

While I'm out doing this non existent job, who the Christ does all the work on the farm for no pay, just a bigger debt.

Luckily I'm 64 years old and it will be all over soon - frankly I can't wait.

It's gotta be better than this bloody con job existance. Have a nice day!

I agree with John. I am 63 years old and have had a gut full of the half-baked promises of drought relief, flood relief and all the other forms of mitigations of the anti-farmer policies adopted over the last couple of decades by city centric, self interested pollies.

If Cyrus, king of the Persian, could build water pipes hundreds of miles long to move water from places where there was too much to places where there was not enough, 2500 years ago, why can't our over-paid, under-worked leaders do that now with the water that goes to waste into the Gulf of Carpentaria? Or is that too straight forward?

Regarding water savings from "Electromagnetic maps cut water storage losses": Surely this breakthrough illustrates one aspect of the water wastage and inefficency in the industry.

All this water could have gone to the environment and downstream for human consumption.

How much more water could be put to better use?

We own a beef property on Creightons Creek Road near Euroa about one hours' drive from the outskirts of Melbourne.

We have number of natural springs on our property and the source of Creightons creek ... one of the famous Seven creeks and the only one not to dry up last summer.

Last week we discovered a bloom in one of our dams and tried to have it tested to determine if it was toxic or not.

Imagine our shock to find that there was no Govt authority eg DPI, DSE, or Goulburn Broken Water who could test for this or showed anything more than indifference to the problem.

Not only are we in the 2nd year of a crippling drought and desperately need the water for our cattle, but we need to know if our creek will also be threatened.

It ultimately affects the livelihood of farmers and the public downstream. There may well be other rural producers who have also discover blooms but no authority is monitoring this vital info.

The info we received was next to useless with officers saying "plant trees around your dam" unquote ... we need a solution now not in 25 years!

Not only are we well aware of tree cover benefits, (we are both University science educated) but we brought water samples back for testing to find there was absolutely no facility for this.

Imagine if this was Asian Bird Flu or Equine Flu ... in reality it can have the same economic consequences.

Why is there is NO organisation currently conducting toxic algal bloom testing in Victoria?

Current water "crisis" is a matter of Mother Nature, non-existent long-term planning, and ad-hoc crisis-management measures (given here in the order of importance).

One just has to let himself google around US government sites to find that almost every single state has proper 'Drought management' plan and plenty of similar documents.

These were usually initially written years ago, some with more recent updates - as required.

If one does the same around Aus Commonwealth (or state) and/or MDBC sites the list of hits is limited to most recent "contingency report" and few infrequent references to 'drought management' from two to tree year ago.

No wonder why Prime Minister starts with what we 'have hoped a few months ago' and ends with 'tragically that has not occurred'.

What a plan … To give him a credit he's neither alone in this nor any different to rest of his fellow politicians.

They are just trying to do the best with what they have on hands and that’s more-less nothing, unfortunately.

So - the best we can hope for is to use some of ‘wisdom’ we gained this time once we’re in similar situation in the future … in, say, 15-20 years unless global warming turns up quicker than expected.

There are lots of people out there to learn from William C. Hoad's words on (good) planning: "The cost of good planning is far less than the cost of correcting errors or the expense of living with mistakes".

Good luck to all of us & lets pray for some rain in October/November/December… We'll need it.

Billy, you got it 100% right. Not only will Labor run us all broke as they did last time, maybe we'll all have to speak Chinese as well!