Since the fish kill and associated water events hit public attention nationwide in the last fortnight, messages and emails that have filled the column’s mailbag talk about “disreputable government management, governments and politicians being brought to account, water theft”.

One irate writer also referred to the “criminality of it all”; yet another, the mistaken belief by some governments that private enterprise substitutes for the public sector in major projects is decimating good government.

We’ve got MPs and others talking about an inquiry and other investigations into what exactly is happening in western NSW and elsewhere in our nation; then there is the MPs’ perennial fall-back position when faced with public criticism and unable or unwilling to resolve the position themselves – that is, yet another royal commission.

Even the federal Minister for Water, David Littleproud, generally regarded, the column is reliably informed, as the sole rising star of the Coalition, was struggling to set the record straight when confronted with questions from Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the greenest of the Greens.

Asked six weeks ago why water was released from Menindee Lakes twice in three years, Littleproud’s spokesman said the information needed more time to assemble than expected because it was complex.

That may be because the federal government and the federal opposition sided with a NSW government plan to reconfigure the lakes to try and save water in the Murray Darling, according to Guardian journalist, Anne Davies.

Water must be the most talked about political subject ever in this nation.

We all know it is but has anyone done anything substantially ongoing to improve it?

Politicians know what they should do but all they ever seem to achieve is talk, talk, talk – especially like now when there’s a drought, bad things happening and communities are ignored; then they run for cover.

Worst of all, the NSW government was told in 2012 by its own experts that flow rules under its proposed 10-year plan for the Darling River would put threatened species of fish at risk.

That advice, from its own Fisheries NSW, warned that issues “directly related to water management” were having negative cumulative effects on native fish.          

The sad part about recent issues is that they undermine the huge potential Australia can develop from pastoral and agricultural industries effectively managed and controlled by a single government public service.

Two of our nation’s greatest engineering feats, Burrinjuck Dam in 1928 and Blowering Dam in 1968 led to the creation and expansion of the mighty Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.

Certainly other irrigation areas have happened on a smaller scale about the nation, but our governments have not done enough to construct more storages or distribute and reticulate water efficiently.

They are failing miserably actually.

Working in Griffith in the early 1960s, Al Grassby, then a CSIRO information officer would enthral new and visiting journalists with stories about the great MIA scheme; that would be added to, in my case, by listening to the many soldier-settlers who farmed blocks and grew great produce and stock.

Then we would turn to the many professional public servants within the Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission and the Agriculture Department who would explain how the great irrigation system fed the water from behind the dam walls down the rivers, through the canals and Dethridge Wheel systems onto the farms; it was heady stuff then to me – still is.

Sadly, now, what we hear too much about is “water buy-backs, water agents, environmental flows”, even – as noted above – “water theft”; the once-great government controlled irrigation systems, according to one column contributor, need a thorough administrative re-jig – as does much of our public service which has been denuded of staff and resources by incompetent governments unable to understand they are there to serve the public not themselves. It gets worse as the years slip by.  

With competency in short supply at the main parliamentary party levels and only a few months to firstly, an election in the biggest populated state and then a federal poll, it is looking more like time, as an old soldier would sometimes tell me: “I know a few retired lieutenant colonels who may just be able to set things straight”.