Does the Senator think that Cubbie is the only casualty of this drought? God help South Australia! If the Senator stirred the custard that he calls brains and did a little research he would discover that this is the longest running drought in this country in recorded history, that irrigation in South Australia is not superior to irrigation on Qld, that Cubbie built every inch of it's own infrastructure with no taxpayer contribution, that Cubbie Station is responsible for more employment than Xenaphon could ever hope to be, that Cubbie Station will pump more export income into the Australian economy than Xenophon could in 100 lifetimes,and that the driest state in the driest continent on Earth should not be curtailing production elsewhere because of jealousy!

If Cubbie didn't harvest that water, it would have run into the Great Australian Bight, creating no jobs, no export income, and no future for a little town called Dirranbandi.

An Australian tragedy is the fantasy of farmland 'management' and the story about "don't you think we want sustainable practice"...the answer is in general "no". What is wanted is to wring money out of properties and in bad times the taxpayer on a series of pretexts instead of closing down and reopening later. Farming practices are in general terms, a disaster run by ignorant people. Land is stressed, leached, salted blown away and washed away by the millions of tons every year courtesy of "expert farmers". Then we get to the Cubbie types...talk and glitter and someone else foots the bill as we do for the other utterly selfish farming types who don't know when to shut down and sell off stock and governments which can't think outside the old ways. Americans came here wanting to bleed the land for cotton and rice...the sooner they are gone the better and the sooner the land is painstakingly restored to some semblance of quality and operated without chemicals and using drill techniques only the better we all will be. When I was a child the land was better cared for... Some farmers have shown the way forward, so did I, but the introverts and destroyers abound, ruining this country.

There is no failure on any political part here. Thank god Cubbie has passed away. The cotton industry is next. No deep drainage issues? No long distance spray-drift issues? Goodnight to the propaganda machine that is Cotton Australia and CRDC that once had some influence through John Anderson, the Nationals and the Liberals.

There will be no levies left for you to lobby through soon with the entire industry (gins and farms) stuffed. The next thing to watch is millions of such investment money turning up at Ord River 2 in WA/NT, to turn high rainfall/pristine areas into wasteland.

He should be more worried about the state of SA than mouthing off about something he knows nothing about!

If the irrigation industry in the Murray Darling Basin cannot decide how to restructure itself to become sustainable into the future without destroying the rivers and the environment, sadly the Good Lord will do it for them.

If you look back in history, these dry periods can last for decades. Without sustainable secure river systems no large water using enterprise can survive.

Cubbie could have been a model for water use and management, if the managers of Cubbie had had a little more foresight. With evaporation being the major loss area when it comes to stored water in dams, it would behove Cubbie management to put great effort in reducing evaporation losses to nil. With most of Cubbie's water storage being 8M deep or less - and evaporation losses being up to 2M - the evaporation losses would be staggering in terms of percentage of water lost. Any effort put into reducing evaporation losses would have a marked effect on Cubbie's viability. Whether Cubbie is investing in the best use of water, by way of crops produced, is another area that requires harsh, and unemotional - but practical - examination.