I know it's hard for farmers, but that's no excuse to squander water. I think most Australian farmers only recently realised what a faucet is.
Hotlinkking this picture from a gov site:
Free flowing bores like this one in Aramac QLD dot the whole of the Great Artesian Basin contributing to water wastage and decreasing pressure.
This blatantly retarded practice has been going on since the artesian basin was first tapped and is still going on today by a significant portion of Autralian farmers. Hell, nearly all of them were doing it years ago. Do they think it's some kind of unlimited resource?