MEDIA RELEASE

In response to today’s news that the Queensland government is still considering activating sleeper licences to the Cooper Creek system, the coordinator of Fair Water Use (Australia), Dr Ian Douglas, is today reported as saying: “The Rudd Government stands condemned for its failure to put an end to the dysfunctional and conflicting governance arrangements that have brought the Murray-Darling to its knees.”

He went on to say that “State premiers and water-ministers show no interest in looking at the big-picture and addressing the ever-increasing threat to Australia’s water future.”

MEDIA RELEASE

In divesting itself of its annual entitlement to 240 billion litres of Murray-Darling water so that it may be allocated to improving the health of the river system, the Twynam Group has joined the ever-increasing percentage of the agricultural community in the Basin that accepts that its previous activities were inappropriate and is moving accordingly, reverting to sustainable, dry-land farming practices, as opposed to the environmentally-destructive broad-acre irrigation of crops unsuited to Australian conditions - a major contributor to saline-degradation and desiccation of much of the Murray-Darling region.

However, it appears that NSW Water Minister, Philip Costa, in common with his colleagues in the other Basin states, believes the nation's water is a resource which can be used for political ends and that he has the right to unilaterally block efforts to address the Murray-Darling crisis, as demonstrated yesterday by his announcement of a total embargo on the trading of water licences in NSW.

MEDIA RELEASE

The rejection of the findings of the Senate Enquiry into the Coorong and the Lower Lakes and the issuing of an alternate minority report by the well-intentioned senators who called for the enquiry is further confirmation that the Murray-Darling crisis cannot be resolved by parliamentary process alone.

On returning to Australia today, the national coordinator of Fair Water Use, Dr Ian Douglas, repeated calls for the declaration of a State of Emergency, giving the Federal Government total control of Murray-Darling water resources and the powers to turn around the progressive ecological and social demise of the Basin, whilst a Royal Commission reviews its administration and governance.

MEDIA RELEASE

Fair Water Use views the Senate Inquiry into the Lower Lakes & Coorong as a welcome initiative, and, like many, was originally unaware that the Senate committee will also be reviewing Senator Nick Xenophon's Emergency Water (Murray-Darling Basin Rescue) Bill 2008.

Although this Bill reflects the growing realisation that a State of Emergency must be declared, sadly it permits the continuation of water reform, more correctly termed water privatisation: a process which should in fact be stopped dead in its tracks. Moreover, in the interests of expediency, it is COAG, and not the Senate, that should be calling immediately for a State of Emergency.