The Water Action Coalition rally in Adelaide on Saturday 10th October was well attended by local and national environmental and water advocacy groups and aroused significant media interest.

The speech delivered by FWU coordinator, Ian Douglas, can be viewed here and "It's all about water", the pre-rally radio interview with WAC convenor, John Caldecott, and Ian Douglas, can be down-loaded here.

The segments of the interview that went to air give the impression that FWU is opposed to irrigation in any form. This is certainly not the case. In unaired portions of the interview, Ian clearly stated that, once the needs of the environment and the public were attended to, remaining water would be allocated to the private sector in line with our stated agenda: namely preferential treatment of those irrigation enterprises which are producing foodstuffs for the domestic market.

With elections looming, it is essential that we all continue our concerted efforts to increase awareness of the scope and magnitude of the water crisis. Many sections of the community are not yet aware that they too will soon be directly affected by the water poverty which is an inevitable consequence of current governmental policy and management mechanisms.

To that end, it has been suggested that Fair Water Use considers standing a candidate for the upper house at next year's South Australian election.  However we must be very mindful of the need not to fragment the water conservation vote in South Australia.

As we are essentially a national group, we would welcome comments and suggestions from supporters on this proposal. You may have noticed that the  supporters' forum is off-line at the moment. Its format is being reviewed to make it more relevant and user-friendly. In the meantime please contact us, quoting your login user-name in the message.

As always, new supporters are encouraged to register and to become involved in the fight for the most important water right of all: the right of the environment and the public of Australia to a fair share of the nation's water.