What town does Mr Turnbull want to close down

In the mid twentieth century, the balance between city and country life must have been pretty good.

With a population of 13,000,000, urban Australia was growing with a more than adequate water supply and the extension of the sewerage system to cover metropolitan areas.

At the same time, our farmers were prosperous growing the food for the city dwellers. They also had a more than adequate water supply and could freely irrigate to keep supply up to demand.

Half a century later, with a population of over 20,000,000, that balance has been lost. Urban areas now endure permanent water restrictions and Malcolm Turnbull has called upon governments to buy up irrigation water for environmental use (dreamland) and to meet the demands of the cities (reality).

Farmers, on the other hand, are struggling with controlled allocations of water and we have read of three or four farmers pooling their water allocations to make just one farm viable.

With the amount of cheap imported foods being consumed in Australia, the demand has been reduced for local produce decimating the agricultural output.

If water is transferred from agriculture to meet the demands of the cities and the number of farmers continue to decline, more cheap imported foods will be required to meet the ever growing demands of the city populations. Will the trend continue until there is no agricultural output and all foods are imported?

It seems to me that to address this imbalance, governments should move more people to the country rather than transferring more water to the cities.

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