Research by Catholic Health Australia estimates the greenhouse footprint of each of the nation’s 83,000 hospital beds is about 28 tonnes a year - double the emissions from an average household. When combined with the emissions from aged care services, the health sector accounts for about five million tonnes of CO2 a year.

The long-awaited Treasury modelling partly unveiled yesterday in Professor Garnaut’s interim report on emissions trading revealed that a 10per cent emissions cut - within a global agreement - would come at a surprisingly low cost for Australia, about 0.1 per cent of GDP a year or a 1.1 per cent reduction in growth by 2020.

Hopes that winter rains had brought a lengthy reprieve for the lower lakes at the mouth of the Murray were dashed by advice to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong from her department, revealing that a decision on whether to inundate them with sea water might have to be made as soon as February. With another long, rainless summer looming, the situation in the lower basin was the worst since records began in 1892.

Government sources said federal Water Minister Penny Wong was anxious to make some high-profile acquisitions under the National Water Plan, which included $3 billion for allocation purchases, as criticism mounted of the Government’s handling of the water crisis.

The Rudd Government faces a dilemma with no escape: it must either alienate the green lobby and climate-change believers to whom it has pandered, or proceed without sufficient support from corporate Australia in the teeth of warnings about corporate financial risk. The second option is unthinkable.

Only six months after the Coalition apparently dropped its support for nuclear power following its election defeat, Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said there was a need for nuclear power but it would require bipartisan political support. “We remain open to having discussions with the Government if it chooses to change its position on nuclear power,” Dr Nelson said.

Every year, the progress on the Murray-Darling Basin cap has been reported and audited. Queensland’s annual reports were a standing joke. The Murray-Darling Basin Commission, essentially an organisation formed by consensus, could do nothing but tut-tut about Queensland’s repeated refusal to step into line.

The industry is concerned that the Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme makes no provision for emissions from the more than $60billion of proposed new natural gas projects, putting that investment in doubt, even though gas usually replaces far dirtier fossil fuels in the countries to which it is exported.

Wentworth Group scientist Peter Cosier labelled as “insignificant” the water returned to the Murray River so far this year and said the full $3 billion allocated to the federal government buyback over the next decade should be spent in one massive purchase.

If all you do is read the speeches of Lindsay Tanner and Craig Emerson, you would think we have a federal Government that recognises the limits of government and spends its days cutting a swath through regulations. But, when you read your newspaper every morning, it’s politics as usual, with a hyperactive Government coming up with a new plan to fix a problem that is bedevilling what now has been extended to working families, pensioners and carers.