MEDIA RELEASE

Although the recommendations made in the paper released yesterday by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists achieve the necessary reduction in diversions from the Murray-Darling Basin, national environmental and public water-rights advocacy group, Fair Water Use Australia, is concerned that its authors place inappropriate emphasis on minimising the impact on profitable irrigating enterprises, as opposed to those which provide the greatest economic and social benefit to the nation - and Basin communities in particular.

The reduction in diversions of less than 10% proposed for the Darling catchment will lead to a projected drop in profits of 2% or less in that part of the Basin, whereas a massive fall in profits is projected for the Murrumbidgee and Murray catchments (26% and 12% respectively) following the proposed 65% and 39% reductions in diversions in these vital food-producing areas.

Many of the large agribusinesses operating in the Darling catchment are engaged in cotton cultivation, a far from labour-intensive industry largely carried out in a naturally semi-arid environment and widely suspected of involvement in, at best, poorly regulated water-harvesting on floodplains; an activity which further reduces inflows into what is still a profoundly stressed river system.

Overseas entities are already heavily involved in the cultivation and ginning of cotton in the Murray-Darling Basin. Thereafter, Australian cotton undergoes minimal value-adding in this country. Together with massive volumes of virtual water, profits increasingly head overseas, with little benefit to regional communities.

Cotton properties with an estimated value of over 1 billion dollars are currently up for sale in the Darling catchment. Fair Water Use has been advised that several overseas-based consortia have already expressed an interest.

The Wentworth Group's paper will be welcomed by the owners of cotton operations in the Darling catchment, consistently amongst the poorest performers in terms of gross receipts per megalitre of water utilised, and especially by those whose properties are on the market.

Fair Water Use believes that the Wentworth Group's proposal would promote increased cotton cultivation in Australia, to the financial benefit of corporate investors but to the profound detriment of the Murray-Darling Basin and its communities.

The Murray-Darling crisis will not be resolved until there is a dramatic reduction in diversions. However Fair Water Use does not agree that undesirable impacts would be minimised by the scheme recommended by the Wentworth Group and has grave concerns that, if implemented, the proposal would exacerbate existing threats to Australia's water security and seriously compromise national food production.