Dats Shtraya, Mite.

Acting PM Michael McCormack offers his scientific assessment of the Darling River disaster: Sometimes it rain, sometimes it dont. Dats Shtraya, mite.

The man blabbered the official party line and that’s it. End of story. No mismanagement, no water over-extraction, no climate change, no nothing. Everybody did their best. That’s nobody’s fault. It just didn’t work.

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Two days ago it was Phillip Glyde’s whingeing about unjust allegations of mismanagement. He is the top bureaucrat in the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and refuses any responsibility. The results were unsatisfactory, but that wasn’t the bureaucrats’ fault.

Yesterday is was Les Gordon’s turn to cry us a river: those guys had nothing to do with that. It wasn’t their fault, either. He is the chair of the Farmer’s Federation water task-force, he must know.

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So, this is the situation: the bureaucrats, suspects of mismanagement, aren’t responsible; the farmers, suspects of over-extracting water and polluting the river, aren’t responsible either. The politicians behind the Murray Darling Plan side with them. So, who’s responsible?

Goddamn you, God!

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The Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young proposes a royal commission to get to the bottom of this. To that effect the Greens shall introduce -- next February -- a member’s bill setting the commission.

Royal commissions are ideal stages for revelations (whether dramatic or merely entertaining, I’ll leave readers to decide), as the recent Banking Royal Commission illustrated. They, however, are costly, take lots of time and their results often are underwhelming.

At any rate, the Greens’ proposal will need Labor’s support to pass. The immediate question is whether Labor, that supported the Murray Darling Plan with the National-Liberal Coalition, will support it.

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I have a better idea. It’s cheaper, simpler, more expeditious.

As we’ve seen everybody did their best. The photo is proof of that. Let’s be smart, then. Scrap the whole very expensive Murray Darling Basin Plan and defund the MDBA. There’s no reason to believe management can be improved (ask Glyde). Nor is improvement required: let everybody do whatever they like, because we know will be the right thing (ask Gordon).

The problem with the Murray Darling Basin is simple: sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn’t (ask McCormack). The solution is prayer (ask Scott Morrison). We don’t need a bureaucracy to do that, we can do it by ourselves. There’s no reason to keep the managers.

Of course, there’s little point to prayer, because it’s all God’s fault anyway!

Let’s save ourselves the money and the trouble. Instead, let’s take that money and party.

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Yep, dats Shtraya, mite.

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Game over people. The planet is so fucked and us with it.

UPDATE:
Phillip Glyde wanted to know who came up with the idea that hundreds of thousands of fish, possibly up to a million, had been killed. He might be interested in the NSW Department of Primary Industries media release of January 7.

You are welcome.