Dear Prime Minister,

Whilst yesterday's news that the Cubbie Group is in major financial difficulties (Financial Review 1^st July 2008) is not in itself a reason to celebrate, given the potential impact on local employment, it is surely not vindictive to hope that this heralds the phasing-out of the cultivation of water-hungry crops in the Murray-Darling basin.

Your Government is now faced with a rare opportunity to draw a line in the sand on the issue of the Murray-Darling crisis: the purchase by the Federal Government of the Cubbie Group, and its massive water rights, at a realistic price would be more than a purely practical means of sourcing around one third of the water required to revive the river-systems; it would also indicate clearly to those invested in the cotton industry that it is time to reinvest in those entities prepared to cultivate more appropriate crops such as dry-land wheat and industrial hemp (the latter approved by the NSW State Government earlier this week).

Significant profits are there to be made in an environmentally responsible manner if appropriate agricultural activities are undertaken. Irrespective of the ecological and social impacts of cotton cultivation, the specialised, capital-intensive infrastructure required places this sector at the whim of environmental conditions: and the wind of change is blowing strong.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Ian Douglas

(Coordinator, Fair Water Use)