Nutrient Neutrality…where to from here?

Yesterday evening’s nutrient neutrality vote affects us all and shows that general election gameplay is in full swing; an incumbent government seeks to deliver a desperate change in an unrealistic timescale and an opposition party, sensing politic blood in the water, shouts it down and presents an equally unviable solution.
Needless to say we are all losers as a consequence, even those who are championing the issue.
Clearly, the solution is to treat waste effectively before it reaches our waterways but the solutions will take time and cost millions to implement. In the meantime new housing in many regional towns and cities is stalled, undermining the delivery of homes for workers and the investment in the social, economic and environment fabric that new residents bring to communities.
Our coasts, watercourses and wetlands are nationally important, not just to those who live in a given river catchment that happens to feed into a currently protected habitat.  A habitat that is only a protected because other locations have ceased to be viable habitats due to decades or centuries, of wrongdoing.  All of us and the water companies that serve us, have a collective responsibility for all our water resources and habitats, even when they are not in our area. The challenge of maintaining all our waters and associated habitats should be shared nationwide and those who cause or allow, pollution should be fined at a level which makes an effective contribution to delivering the necessary solutions which, in turn, should be imposed where required.  
But let us be under no illusion; effective fines may result in some water companies going bust.  It will require some agribusiness to change their operational models and food prices may rise as, crop yields fall. But to require certain regional communities, that desperately need investment, to carry the full burden of decades of national wrongdoing, compounded by a lack of action from successive governments, is a disproportionate burden. If that stance is maintained as a regional cost it will undermine the social and financial investment needed to support the very habitats that now need our protection.