The recent Federal Government acquisition of Toorale Station and its vast water allocation was always likely to test the environmental and social commitment of downstream irrigators. Sadly it appears that a significant number in Queensland have failed the assessment, and some are planning to activate ?sleeper? licences, enabling them to extract much or all of the newly-available water from the Warrego River.

Major contributors to this opportunistic exploitation include the new owners of ?Mirage Plains?, recently purchased with the financial support of UK agribusiness investors, who in the midst of the water crisis brazenly intend to convert the 50,000 hectare grazing property into a water-intensive, cropping enterprise.

Fair Water Use coordinator, Dr Ian Douglas was reported today as saying: ?These actions may be legally permissible, but those irrigators who plan to take advantage of attempts to increase environmental flows in the Murray-Darling for their own, frequently overseas, interests, stand condemned by all Australians who understand the importance of a healthy river system to the ecology and social framework of the region?.

He added, ?The fact that this ecologically-destructive free-loading can occur is yet another indictment of the administrative mechanisms currently in place, and confirms the danger of the current water ?reform? process; as it allows decisions, which may totally negate the benefits of treatments applied to address the crisis, to be made by those more concerned about their financial bottom-line than the sustainability or ethical nature of their agricultural practices?.

It also lends further credence to the ever-louder calls for declaration of a State of Emergency and the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the management of the Murray-Darling Basin.

?Concerned Australians must not be lulled into the false expectation that the current Senate Inquiry will provide a panacea for the entire Basin?, Dr Douglas concluded.