Dusty towns battle drought as federal and state Nationals squabble over Murray-Darling plan

In Nevertire, a speck of a town on the Mitchell Highway between Dubbo and Bourke, the dust is everywhere. Fences are caked with it, paddocks are red dust bowls and the sky is tinged orange.

And Sidney Kinsey knows when to expect the dust. It's Sunday and he is having lunch with his wife in the town's only pub. "It’s on its way,” Kinsey says pointing to the hazy orange horizon. "We will get another one tonight."

Nevertire residents have become resigned to the dust storms that tear over their tiny town at least once a week, although often more. Some are so severe the highway has to be closed for hours.

The land is so parched in parts of drought-ravaged NSW that the storms leave towns blanketed in thick red dust and residents battling all sorts of health complaints.

Kinsey, 69, has recently had to start using an asthma puffer after he couldn’t shake a cough that developed as a result of the intense storms. "This drought is different to others, it just keeps going and going,” says Kinsey, a fuel salesman to farmers and graziers.

He is in the pub ahead of the arrival of a bus-load of NSW cabinet ministers on a road trip from Dubbo, also on the brink of running out of water, to Bourke.

Bourke’s mayor Barry Hollman managed to convince Deputy Premier John Barilaro that a community cabinet meeting should be held in his town. And so an entourage of ministers, their staff and media rolled in, hotels were fully booked and the only pub, the Port of Bourke, was heaving.

Radio broadcaster Alan Jones was there too, presenting his breakfast program on Monday.

Barilaro's idea was for his cabinet colleagues to "roll up their sleeves and get a bit of dirt on their boots". The Nationals' leader likes to play up the differences between the Coalition partners. Earlier this year at the Nationals’ state conference, he talked to his base and had a dig at his Liberal colleagues, warning he wouldn’t bow to “city moderates”. At the start of the new term, Barilaro's game plan was to stress that the Nationals would not be subservient to the Liberals.

Spats between the two parties have become public in recent months, especially between Barilaro and Environment Minister Matt Kean, who clashed over the government's bushfire policy. But when it comes to the worsening drought, the Coalition seems to be on the same page.

At the Bourke weir on Monday to announce a $2 million bore and pipeline for the thirsty town, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said there was no doubt that water was consuming everyone's thoughts.

Bourke was just a fortnight away from running out of water before it received 100 millimetres of rain. It topped up the weir and gave the town some breathing space for six months. But with the hottest months ahead, and no prospect of good rain fall, it is a short reprieve.

"The underlying stress everyone is feeling is water," Berejiklian says.

But while the state Coalition is united, the same can not be said for Barilaro and his federal Nationals colleague, Water Resources Minister David Littleproud. The split is over the controversial Murray Darling Basin Plan, the water sharing plan that is undergoing an independent review by the NSW and Victorian governments.

Barilaro has labelled the plan "untenable" and has warned that he would be prepared to "rip up" the plan if NSW is not given a better deal. He sought legal advice about the state's ability to walk away from it and revealed this week that the advice says abandoning it is possible.

But Littleproud immediately fired a warning to NSW. Withdrawing from the plan would force the Morrison government to abandon $1 billion of water infrastructure projects to pay for water buybacks, he says.

Littleproud says withdrawing from the plan would "not return one drop of water to NSW farmers". But Barilaro's language has not changed. No decisions will be made until the review is finalised, due before Christmas, but he maintains that the "truth is it has to be good for us or we can't continue".

Back in Nevertire, where the pub is full of thirsty locals and ministers, Kinsey says business is slow because farmers have very little need for fuel and diesel. Even his hobby has grind to a halt.

Kinsey and his wife, Maria, keep 18 bee hives that produce pure honey that Kinsey sells as a premium product to locals around Nevertire. But there is no honey this year.

"Our honey is very popular but there are no flowers so no honey, it's just another thing that the drought has killed off," Kinsey says. "We are all fed up because it is only going to get tougher. And all we can do is wait."