After many months in dispute with Victoria's Bracks Government over the details of its $10.5 billion strategy to rescue the Murray-Darling river system, the Federal Government announced plans this week to use its external affairs powers to override Victoria's constitutional power to manage its own water resources.
It has been widely criticised as policy on the run. On the one hand the Federal Government is taking a ham-fisted approach to a very complex problem. But its defenders say that at least they're taking decisive action. Such a glib responses serve no useful purpose when there is a much more fundamental sticking point.
This can be illustrated by a comparison with the Government's strategy to tackle the problem of child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory.
In this issue of Eureka Street, Brian McCoy presents a considered response to the NT intervention. McCoy is a Jesuit priest who is NHMRC Fellow for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research at La Trobe University's Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society. He has spent most of the past three decades living and working with indigenous Australians.
For all the complexity of his argument, McCoy's analysis comes down to one word — trust.
He says: "As this Government exercise develops, the experience of trust between all involved is central. When people experience being shamed and blamed, their trust in themselves and those criticising them can easily be further eroded."
The Victorian irrigators believe their water management practices have been more responsible than those of their counterparts interstate, and that the federal plan fails to give them credit for this. According to their perception, they are sharing equal blame and shame for the sorry state of the river system, when it is more the result of the bad practices of others.
Federal Water Resources Minister Malcolm Turnbull thinks they are deluding themselves, and there is a good chance that this is in fact the case. But the point is that a relationship of trust must be established between the Federal Government and the Victorian irrigators before any plan can be put into action.
Resources must be invested in demonstrating to the the Victorians that they are deluding themselves. This involves properly listening to the Victorians, and maintaining a genuinely open mind to the possibility that their recalcitrance is justified. Turnbull would say that this is exactly what he has been doing all year in