Urgency is one of the most common defenses offered by decision makers who lack the knowledge, experience and foresight to meet the challenges they face. But what if the urgent action makes the situation worse? Premature action is rarely a good idea. A doctor who starts using the knife without a good grasp of the real causes of a patient's health can't really offer urgency as an excuse when the patient dies. A builder who starts building a house without proper plans can't really be taken seriously if urgency is the excuse provided when the house falls down. The Canberra bureaucrats managing the water buy-back are actively damaging the efficiency of the nation's major irrigation systems. In some situations they are taking water from rivers that should stay in the rivers. If they were buying water rights and tearing them up Ms Wong's argument could possibly be justified. Unfortunately they are not. They are merely transferring the ownership. The ill-conceived water market that enables them to buy a megalitre of water upstream and then transfer it downstream (without any deductions for losses due to evaporation, leakage, or consumption) further exacerbates over allocation.

The Darling River Action Group fully supports Penny Wong's view. And plenty of irrigators have realised the present level of extractions is unsustainable.

To purchase the right to use water from a source high in a catchment and then to transfer that exact amount to be extracted from the same system further down actually INCREASES the total water extractive load on the catchment. It fails to take into account leakage and evaporation in the system as water travels down the river system. The short term quick fix is to improve the efficiency of irrigation and water distribution systems in the lower reaches of the catchment. This can be done quickly and is a permanent saving. It does not preclude other longer term options. Relocating water licences using taxpayer money to buy water licences from farmers high in the catchment and transfering them to urban use low in the catchment is very counter productive and wasteful of resources.

When will people learn that buying allocation water that is only available when it has rained and is in the dam is crazy because when it has rained the water won't be needed. It would be far better to take away all high flow pumping and water harvesting rights as this is the water that comes into the river systems with the volume and power to flow right to the rivers end and flush the system.