It points more to concern about getting votes, as illustrated by recent Barnaby Joyce "warnings" to the Coalition; more about creating sympathy for drought devastated communities to divert attention from irresponsible govt. policy failures, more about dealing with symptom rather than causes, more about denial than trying to make sense of irrefutable science and more about ruling elites who can shift benefits to themselves and costs to the 'poor' and disadvantaged.

A cynical analysis? Perhaps. The problem is, I see no reason to think otherwise and plenty of facts to support it. Yes, drought is a natural part of our hydrological cycles, yes, we do need water storage for times of low rainfall events and yes, there will always be people who need support in our society. What we don't need is the mythology surrounding those needs.

Since colonisation, attempting to tame nature has been an Australian obsession. In times of drought, politicians are under pressure to "drought proof" Australia. We have heard and seen it all before; naive attempts to control and alter natural systems rather than living with realities. For example, witness the effects of injecting $13 billion of taxpayer money into the Murray-Darling river system in attempts to 'tame' it (for spurious purposes), resulting in billions more now needing to be spent on dealing with the consequences; riverine communities and farming families left without essential water to sustain themselves, fragmentation and destruction of ecosystems needed to sustain the nation's viability, increased mental health issues and disruptions to a viable and sustainable economy.

Australia's national climate projections indicate that over the coming decade we will spend even more time in drought. Coupled with the fact that many landscapes have been more fragmented and degraded since the 1800s, future droughts could result in ever increasing devastation and ever increasing costs to help mitigate the effects.

The government's simplistic, easy response is to "drought proof Australia" which translates to: take more water from the rivers which in many cases have already been reduced to a few muddy pools and store it in dams. More dams don't make more water. Rain doesn't make more water either. There is a finite amount of water on this isolated planet in space and it is continuously re cycled through various stages and phases. You can't create more water you can only change it from one form to another or shift it from one place to another. More often than not resulting in a few big powerful winners and many powerless loosers.

With catastrophic consequences governments have shown they have the ability to disrupt the stages in the rhythms of natural water cycles but miserably refuse to even consider let alone accept the science of the kick- backs and feed- back loops governing where essential life supporting rain will fall. And sadly neither do the majority of voters who return them to power.

What govts. of all colours and creeds haven't grasped is that the water cycle and climate cycle are not two separate systems. It is futile trying to address climate problems such as drought without recognising that impacts on the water cycle also impact climate and vice versa. For example, mass deafforestation sets off a chain of reactions that destabalise the water cycle which then have knock on effects on climate systems.

Outright science denial has been replaced by efforts to redefine climate change as natural and climate action as unwarranted. Almost daily we read about clandestine lying by vested interests in politics and industry, mostly in mining, energy and export irrigation industries.

Australia cannot be drought proofed and I defy anyone to provide evidence that it viably can. Our only hope therefore is to endeavour to myth proof Australians and call politicians to account for their wilful ignorance. If this means more public protests so be it.