And the Prime Minister last week warning that millions of people along the Murray Darling Basin will have only enough water for basic domestic use from the middle of the year.

That's six to eight weeks away.

The Murray Darling Basin is in crisis.

And remember, this is our most important agricultural region.

34 per cent of the nation's gross value in agricultural production.

75 per cent of our irrigated crops and pastures.

Agricultural production worth up to 7 billion dollars.

And we're talking about key areas of produce.

Rice, stone fruits, vegetables, beans, cabbages, cauliflower, lemons, apricots, cherries, peaches, apples, grapes, peas, pumpkins, macadamia nuts.

And forget your cheap bottle of wine.

That is also at risk.

The Prime Minister has seriously said we should pray for rain.

It's a good point.

But it does raise the question, what do we do when the rain falls.

A report by Marsden Jacob Associates last week, commissioned by the National Water Commission, tells us what we most probably know.

That people living in Sydney and Brisbane, but it would be true of people living anywhere, get the best value from rainwater tanks.

Which prompts the question, who banned rainwater tanks in the first place?

The answer is government, who thought they could make money out of selling us water that wasn't theirs.

So they therefore decided to stop us from collecting our own.

Now look at the mess we're in.

This report found the obvious.

That rainfall patterns near the coast at least favour individual household collection.

In other words, your garden doesn't have to die.

Your footpath doesn't have to remain unwashed.

Or your car.

And of course the report also found unsurprisingly that rainwater tanks help households lower their water bills.

This is hardly rocket science.

The report was also critical of water utilities' attitudes towards water tanks.

Well why would Sydney Water, for example, present water tanks in a positive light.

Why wouldn't they say they're less cost efficient and energy efficient?

The more Sydney people, for example, or Melbourne people, or Adelaide people collect their own water, the more money is lost by the water utilities and the less money is available to government which rips dividends out of those water utilities.

This report found that if rainwater tanks were installed in five per cent of households in Sydney, Melbourne and south east Queensland each year, that would provide as much additional water as planned desalination plants in Sydney and on the Gold Coast and from the first stage of the Traveston Dam on the Mary River.

But only 17 per cent of households have rainwater tanks.

So here we are being told what we know really, that tanks are very cost-competitive compared with dams and desalination plants.

Five times more energy efficient than desalination, per kilolitre of water produced.

Surely the first step in addressing the problem of metropolitan and regional water, as opposed to water for agriculture, the first step is to provide very significant incentives for people to install urgently their own rainwater tanks.

But as with most things about water, it's not happening.

At least not to the extent it should be.