Otherwise the Murray Darling will die from the arse-up. Without environmental flows, how do we get rid of the 79000 tonnes of salt that enter the Lower lakes each year?

No community, or sectional interest, has the right to stuff up the long term health of our river systems.

Why not start at the bottom (water nearest to the lakes) and work up up the river.

This would be a much more efficient use of dollars.

Since the socialists have stolen 70pc of our water entitlements last year, without any compensation, it does not supprise me the socialists want the rest!

And no doubt these water acquisitions will be redistributed to business in wetter seasons.

All I can see is red.

The Murray is not dying.

You South Australian's have to decide which ecosystems you want to devote water to - NSW and Victoria can't be expected to waste more than 1 million megalitres of water on you for evaporation each year in the lower lakes and Lake Victoria.

The construction of the barrages turned this system into a fresh water lake and removed the safety valve that had worked perfectly well in every drought since the last ice age.

The South Australians have been pretending that there were no droughts prior to the construction of the barrages, but the mud cores tell us otherwise.

These people demanded more than 1 million megalitres of water from the dams just to cover the evaporation from the lake system but they've never paid for this indulgence because they claim it was for "ecological purposes".

In fact, it is an outrageous indulgence, funded mostly by the upstream users who cover the full cost of the dams.

Clearly, the metropolitan governments in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane have demonstrated their fundamental incapacity to represent their own rural minorities.

In all the water plans I have seen there is a generous amount reserved only for the environment.

But the trouble is, in the middle of a drought, this water does not exist.

Some commentators on this issue are confusing the short-term issue with long-term sustainability.

It's easy to put forth simple solutions, as Mr Xenophon & Tony have done here, when you don't understand how the system works.

The senator needs to do some home work before opening his mouth..the only senator that has any brains on the issue is Barnaby Joyce.

I don't see red, but rather lots of watermelons - green on the outside and red on the inside.

Man has intervened, then man has to rectify.