MEDIA RELEASE

Fair Water Use (Australia) believes that many Australians will be outraged by the speech delivered today by the Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water at the National Conference of the Murray-Darling Association, most notably the announcement that the Rudd Government condones the selling-off of Australia’s rapidly-dwindling water resources: [TRANSCRIPT HERE]

“The only appropriate water entitlement is the right of Australians to protect the nation’s water from the activities of water privateers, who are devastating water resources and water security in so many regions overseas,” said national coordinator, Ian Douglas.

“It is now widely agreed that the anthropogenic causes of the current Murray-Darling crisis are a direct result of the linkage of property ownership to private water entitlement and the endemic hyper-allocation of water, both driven by state-based greed and political horse-trading,” he continued.

“In order to ensure Australia’s water security, these iniquitous arrangements must be extinguished, and it is only reasonable that governments responsible for such disastrous policies provide meaningful compensation to landholders affected by this long-overdue action,” Dr Douglas concluded.