Clover Moore endorses this event year after year, she being a “greenie advocate” and “carbon warrior” yet does nothing to call this yearly event to halt. As mayor of Sydney she might have shown the way by suggesting we forgo the fiery display and use the billion dollars to reach out with help our farmers. This would have given people the opportunity to be selfless and do something more spectacular by reaching out to these struggling people.

Me thinks our very generous Aussie people may well have jumped at the opportunity. What a wonderful chance it would have afforded them to know they had began their New Year doing something really worthwhile. When we compare the animal emissions they also claim as being a contribution to climate change, this yearly event makes the animal emissions look paltry in comparison.

The Greens contradict themselves by saying carbon is the problem yet pretend not to see it where it suits. It’s great to see on Sky News the truth about their deceitfulness finally being revealed. 

Two years ago I railed against the Murray-Darling Basin Authority for its poor river management which resulted in a catastrophic flood and a range of environmental consequences. Now we have the opportunity to question its ability to manage the resource and the river during a dry time. The MDBA need to ‘fess up’ and start taking proactive steps to address the damage instead of blaming everything else. 

In a recent interview Phillip Glyde, MDBA CEO said the Basin Plan was “trying to correct 100 years of over-allocation”. The recent fish kills should be telling authorities that their management of the water resource over the past decade is making the system worse, not better. In 94 of the 100 years that the system was supposedly ‘over-allocated’ there were recordings of fish kill deaths but none were of the magnitude of those we’ve seen recently, including the event in the Menindee Lakes. 

Blackwater events have also increased. Since 2009 there have been four major hypoxic blackwater events in the Edward and Wakool River systems, killing hundreds of thousands of native fish. The authorities first used flooding as their excuse, now drought is their excuse. The only major change in the past 10 years has been the 2007 Water Act and the fact that the major owner of water is the Commonwealth Government. The question needs to be asked, where has all the water gone? In late 2016 we had floods and most of the Basin was at 100 per cent capacity, with Menindee Lakes at 96.5 per cent. Just over two years later these lakes are nearly empty and we have what is being termed a ‘natural’ disaster. But it’s not a ‘natural disaster, it’s a man-made disaster. I would ask all agricultural representative bodies to call for resignations of those in charge.