- In brilliantly funny and punchy prose Richard Beasley, former Senior Counsel Assisting at the Murray-Darling Royal Commission, absolutely castigates the bureaucrats and politicians who were supposed to manage and ensure sustainable water flows in the Basin. They screwed up big time because of incompetence and political corruption.
- The book is a hugely enjoyable read, full of personality and cheekiness. It's bracing and utterly delightful and extremely well written. The subtitle is A Very Angry Book. And his views are those of an expert.
- He demolishes the conventional banalities in government statements and those from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) with surgical precision. There are constant digs at Canberra, the Nationals and One Nation: When it comes to water, don't hold your breath for legality or bravery of political action in this country. There's nothing like Canberra, or the National Party. Too much illegality is never enough.
- As for climate change, the MDBA chose to totally ignore it: Point blank. Despite being told not to. More than once...In short, the CSIRO has stated that if we maintain our current allocations to agriculture in the basin then ecological thresholds may be crossed and the resulting changes may well be largely irreversible. Add climate predictions to this and it gets even starker: unless we allocate a lot less water to agriculture, then 'climate change would be likely to lead to irreversible ecological degradation'.
- This book is a gem. It's electrifying. Easily one of the best political books I've read in a long time, and I've read a lot of them. I highly recommend it.
(As to be expected, in the current Australian publishing way, there's no index or author photo. The lack of an index in particular is unforgivable)
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