Meta-Xenophon

While I have nothing to add to the discussion of (a) whether or not Nick Xenophon has made a tactical blue in holding the whole country to ransom and (b) whether or not his proposal for throwing money at the Murray is a sound one, I would like to say that I am getting very sick of the way the situation is being discussed around the traps.

In particular I am very bloody annoyed by the ignorant rubbish about South Australia, including a usually highly respected political blogger using the word 'parochial' as a synonym for 'not from the Eastern states', something one more usually associates with Victorian football commentators. I am also gobsmacked by the number of bloggers and commenters who appear to think that the health of the Murray-Darling Basin doesn't affect anyone except South Australians.

Sounding off about it here is preferable to getting into it with the bully boys of the blogosphere, the mildest of whose responses would be something along the lines of 'Oh but you would say that, wouldn't you.' (One of these days when I'm feeling strong I'm going to write a long post about the tactics men use to argue with women online; the application of the word 'shrill' to any woman who disagrees with you about anything -- or talks at all, really -- is a particular favourite and that's only the tip of a very dirty and debris-studded iceberg. But I digress.)

The Prime Minister has been heard more than once to express the opinion (before he was elected, naturally) that South Australia was a waste of space, so if he pays any attention to Xenophon you can be sure it won't be for the benefit of South Australians, the vast majority of whom have until recent times loved and relied on the river.

But if successive federal governments of both stripes hadn't spent the last few decades ignoring the warnings and pandering to the blood-sucking bottom-feeding river-murdering Eastern States irrigators who have been draining the river dry upstream in order to grow climate-inappropriate cash crops like rice and cotton (and indulging in said pandering simply to secure strategic votes and to hell with the health of the biggest river system in the country), it would never have come to this in the first place. Xenophon is just a great big Greek chicken coming home to Canberra, after many years, to roost.

UPDATE: it's through (well, as good as) -- and Xenophon has secured some dosh for the river. Looks like a sensible win-win compromise to me -- independently of whether any of it is a good idea ...