THE COMMENTARIAT Roll out water recycling in drought assistance packages – Lisa McLean (The Age/Sydney Morning Herald): “In Sydney alone, 1.8 Sydney Harbours a year, or 1,000 Olympic swimming pools a day, are flushed into the ocean through outlets including North Head, Bondi, and Malabar. Every drop could be reused to meet all our non-drinking water needs, including toilet flushing, clothes washing, water features, irrigation, and cooling systems. Critically it will provide water for environmental flows: a new water supply to maintain healthy rivers, fish, biodiversity and agriculture. To ensure all wastewater is kept locally and reused, we need new policies and infrastructure investment.” GST reform needs to favour fiscally responsible states ($) – Dominic Perrottet (The Australian): “Almost 40c in every dollar of our revenue is derived from the commonwealth — primarily through GST payments, which totalled $18.7bn (about 22 per cent of revenue), and a complex web of national agreements, which totalled $10.4bn (about 13 per cent of revenue), and national partnerships of $2.9bn (about 4 per cent of revenue). This money is not some sort of fiscal manna from heaven bestowed on NSW by a benevolent commonwealth. It is derived directly from tax paid by ordinary people — it’s your money. But are the states and their taxpayers receiving value for this contribution? And does this system create incentives for growth, reform and productivity?” Blinded by romance, we lack vision for our brown country – Garry Linnell (The New Daily): “Few modern leaders have been prepared to take a view about the long-term sustainability of our agricultural sector. The reasons are obvious. Modern Australia’s ties with its brown land are steeped in the mythology of the 19th century and the stories and poems of men like Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, who gave us a world filled with nuggety and courageously pragmatic characters forever living in hardship while stoically defying nature and disease. But that world has long gone. When a devastating seven-year drought assaulted the country in the lead up to Federation, more than 30 per cent of Australians worked on the land. Now, fewer than 400,000 people work in the agriculture, aquaculture and fishing industries out of a workforce that numbers close to 12 million.” |