Without partisan bickering, politicians have set aside $11.8 billion for a science-backed program that, among other things, pays irrigators not to suck the river dry.
Yet along the Murray, there is a climate-change conundrum that responsible politicians and smart scientists have yet to solve: Most farmers, the biggest losers as the river shrinks, simply do not buy the notion that southern Australia’s climate is changing in a way that is probably irreversible. Their skepticism has withstood nearly 13 years of unrelenting drought, falling incomes and daily encounters with a river that is dying in front of their eyes…
“How long we can continue depends, I guess, on the government,” Denise said. “How long can the government continue to keep delivering drought relief?”
Not long. The minister of agriculture, Tony Burke, has said that as climate change makes drought an unexceptional circumstance, government must wean farmers off assistance and push them into self-sustaining livelihoods.
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