vote in the poll for harvesting rain, page-45

I don't understand what you are talking about, Michael. What 'country pollies' do you mean? And what 'privileged treatment' are you talking about?

Re the water issue, if you're talking about the amount of irrigation water for dairy and horticulture, I agree that there's a need for greater water use efficiency. Alternatively we could stop irrigating and import all our veges, fruit and dairy products and let the land go back to pasture or urban development (or even just wasteland). (It doesn't matter where horticulture and dairy are produced, they still needs lots and lots of water, and if we don't have enough water for our food production needs we may be better off to import from places with more water to spare.)

But if you're under the impression that the government should stop investing in agricultural and land use research (or I should say, co-investing - it's mostly dollar for dollar or government dollar for every two dollars of farmer contributions) then I don't agree. The government spends heaps on other sectors. And if you go historically, then the government has certainly invested squillions in communications infrastructure from which the IT sector benefits greatly.

And if you want to see real farm subsidies, Australia has virtually none compared with the USA, Europe and some other places.

But I suspect you just have a thing about farmers without knowing much at all about agriculture in Australia.