From Lyndon Schneiders at Unleashed

How many hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars is Tony Abbott prepared to pour down the bottomless pit labelled northern development to keep Barnaby Joyce and Bill Heffernan happy?

...

But Heffernan won't believe it because he was removed as chair of the Land and Water Taskforce when Labor swept to power in 2007 and had the audacity to replace the politician-stacked taskforce with a body with broad scientific, pastoral and agricultural expertise.

Of course the fear-mongering and lies that pass for debate in opposition to real action in response to climate change and saving the Murray-Darling Basin has shown science and knowledge is usually the first victims of political debate in this country, and this is no different.

But then there are the real-life failures that are a little harder to ignore.

Following the most recent northern development frenzy, $220 million of taxpayer funds was ploughed into the long stalled Stage 2 of Ord River Irrigation Scheme in the eastern Kimberley. The brave new world of agricultural development was to be created by a rice bonanza.

In 2010, rural media breathlessly reported the return of rice cultivation to the Ord after an absence of 30 years. This was to be the bedrock crop for the entire Ord region.

With much less fanfare, the same outlets quietly reported two months ago that this year's crop, the second, had been infested with the destructive rice blast fungus that the agriculture department has acknowledged can never be eradicated. It was also the first time that Australian rice crops had been infested.

Despite this, Team Abbott has indicated it will pour more money into a proposed Ord Stage 3. Have they lost their minds?

It is clear Abbott and friends remain wedded to the ill-considered dreams of northern development and no cost, environmental or financial, will be too high in keeping the extremists within Coalition ranks happy.

Abbott's embrace of the northern myth also puts into clearer perspective his successive attempts to overturn the Queensland Government's Wild River legislation as this legislation protects northern rivers from precisely these types of ill-thought development schemes.

For months Abbott has claimed that his opposition to wild rivers protection is a moral position based on delivering traditional owners the right to veto river protection. It is now clear that Abbott has used traditional owners as a human shield to support his northern development pipedreams and fantasies.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2908144.html