The Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong has handed the allocation of water rights back to the state governments. Water ministers from state and federal governments met recently to review the Murray Darling management scheme set up in the dying days of the Howard government. State governments want the right to manage the amount of water allocated to them under the scheme as they see fit. Victoria, for example, will pipe irrigation water across the state to the goldfields towns of Ballarat and Bendigo. Irrigation systems will be lined to reduce leakage and make up for the water supplied to those towns.
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