September 12, 2008
The Institute of Public Affairs' September issue of Review has an article by Mary Jo Fisher, a Liberal Senator for South Australia entitled 'Nanny state is a poor guide to policy design.' This article is about individual freedom being restricted by Adelaide's 4 year old backyard water bans.
Fisher argues that these bans are an example of the Rann state government being a nanny state wagging its finger and imposing a ban prohibition or punitive measure on our basic right to choose. Fisher's next argument is that debate about the bans or prohibition becomes a smokescreen for government inaction on what should be the real agenda. She says:
Adelaide's four year-old backyard water bans are a good example. They're unnecessary and don't save water. They cause our communities pain. And they won't help the Murray-Darling River. Even in cities and regional towns which don't rely on the Murray Darling, water restrictions are a cover for lack of genuine infrastructure are a cover for lack of genuine infrastructure planning and government inaction.
I concur with that. The current problems in the Murray-Darling Basin are the result of history of bad management over a long period by the states plus a long drought.
It is the next step Fisher's argument about what constitutes the real agenda that is problematic:
Addressing South Australia's water problems includes separating Adelaide from the Murray and allowing our farmers and river communities full access to to the Murray's available water. Adelaide has a long coastline with consistent winds. Re-using waste water and combing wind energy with desalinisation would afford coastal communities and Adelaide itself access to green and plentiful solution, at a price within our ability to pay.
It is the phrase " and allowing our farmers and river communities full access to the Murray's available water" that is problematic. Good water management in the Murray-Darling Basin requires reduced access--(reducing the over-allocated water licences) to water by irrigators and increased environmental flows for the river. So the Liberal Party, on this account, still resists reducing over -allocated water licences and increasing envirornmental flows to save the lower lakes and Corrong. The River Murray is there for the irrigators. It is their freedom from the nanny state that is paramount.
That anti-environmental position is buried amidst a green rhetoric about human needs
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Gary
I read Mary Jo Fisher's first speech to the Senate. She replaced Senator Vanstone. Fisher's family background is a wheat and sheep farm in Western Australia's wheat belt and her faamily farms in the suth east of South Australia.
On water she says:
Her speech is all about farming communities. There is no concern in the speech for the river or its wetlands.