Speaking ahead of today's water summit, the Prime Minister said the best thing that could come out of the meeting for the long term would be an acceptance that this was a national issue which could not be approached from a parochial state point of view.
"If ever there was an issue requiring us to be Australians before anything else, it is this. Rivers flow across state borders.
The Great Artesian Basin lies below the borders of many states," he told ABC radio this morning.
"We have to, in our thinking, try and obliterate state borders and think of the interconnection that exists between communities in different states all along the river system."
"That is the spirit that I want out of today's meeting. It is the spirit in which the meeting has been called.
Mr Howard said the summit would start with a briefing from the
Murray-Darling Basin Commission on the scale of the problem.
Then he and the premiers would discuss what had to be done to ensure the towns and communities along the river system had enough water over the next year.
"That is an immediate livelihood survival thing for them. That is our first great practical priority," he said.
All Australians were entitled to fair treatment and there was no hierarchy of need, Mr Howard said.
"The cities don't have any greater claim or any lesser claim than the country.
Complex problem
As with all difficult issues, there was no one single solution, he said.
"You need to examine all the alternatives and be willing to consider all the alternatives, recognising that some 80 per cent or more of the water consumed in Australia is consumed by agriculture, but also recognising the critical dependence of the whole nation on a strong agricultural sector.
The difficult issue of over-allocation of water had to be discussed, Mr Howard said.
"When you have a big problem you have to be willing to discuss everything," he said.
"That doesn't mean to say we are going to do all of these things, but they do need to be discussed.
"There has been over-allocation especially in NSW. Part of it is due to the fact that the crops in Victoria are perennials, whereas the crops in NSW are different, and therefore the mindset that has been brought to the allocation of water in some parts of Australia is different than in others."