As the people rallying in large numbers over recent weeks in South Australia are being correctly informed, the root-cause of the problem with the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) is neither drought nor climate change: it is man-made. The MDB is being mismanaged and water has been over-allocated by governments.

The member governments of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) are behaving as if there is no crisis, no drought, no disaster evolving in the Lower Lakes and the Coorong and it is business as usual.

(Original article published by ABC News Online: September 16, 2008)

In the midst of the cacophony of political lambasting, parochial foot-stamping and media static engendered by the crisis currently affecting the Murray-Darling Basin, there has been scant voicing of what many view as the underlying anthropogenic cause of its plight: the 1994 decision of the Council of Australian Governments "to implement a strategic framework to achieve an efficient and sustainable water industry", emphasising "the adoption of pricing regimes based on the principles of consumption-based pricing"; in effect, the establishment of an open water market.

Those 18th Century heroes of the Enlightenment, the vanguard exponents of our notions of reason and empiricism, the natural philosophers, spoke of the "economy" of the various species they observed and recorded. Whether this habit reflected a deep understanding of the workings of nature or was just a quaint turn of phrase, it remains an entirely apt perspective of the natural world.