Heffernan the ShubHugger

Here's a rip-snorting article from the SMH prophecying ghost-cities and the collapse of 'civilised' Australia in the years to come if our water policy is not drastically revised... better go easy with the sprinkler this week, eh?

Australia has the potential to become one of the most stupid, short-sighted, short-lived civilisations (for want of a better term) ever created.
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"It's a disgrace," Heffernan told me. "They could end clear-felling of old-growth forests tomorrow. And they should..."
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Yes, Wild Bill Heffernan, the Junee farmer, Irish-Catholic conservative and political knee-capper, who sits impregnably at the top of the Liberal Senate ticket for NSW in the next federal election. He also happens to be driving two Senate inquiries (he is chairman of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislative Committee) into national water policy and sustainable forestry practices, and thus inevitably colliding with a raft of ugly statistics and ugly satellite images.
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The senator did not blink when I told him the noted environmental scientist Tim Flannery believed Perth's water shortage would become so severe the city could become "Western civilisation's first ghost metropolis".
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"We need to get beyond denial," Heffernan said. "All governments. The only way for governments to get the political courage to act is for the public to be made aware of the gravity of our national situation.

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