Dear Mr Rudd,  

Minister Wong?s reported comments yesterday that there is no water available to revive the Murray Darling as it is all allocated, ignore the fact that your Government has the constitutional authority to assume emergency control of the nation?s water resources.

Current data obtained by Fair Water Use from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and relevant State water authorities reveal that around 4,000 gigalitres of water is currently held in public storage in the Murray-Darling Basin: including Menindee: 510 gl; Dartmouth: 730 gl; Hume: 620 gl; Eildon: 562 gl; Burrunjuck: 450 gl; Blowering: 650  gl.

The volume currently impounded by private enterprise is estimated to be in excess of 1,000 gigalitres (predominantly in the upper Darling catchment).

It is therefore not unreasonable to ask why you have not directed Minister Wong to acquire the 1,500 gigalitres that the CSIRO has informed you is urgently required by the system if it is to be given a reasonable chance of restoration.

As will be evident at the Rally For The River in Adelaide this coming Friday, a rapidly-increasing proportion of the Australian electorate is demanding that this decisive step is taken, and is calling upon you, as Prime Minister, to ensure that it is made without further delay.

 Sincerely,

Dr Ian Douglas (National Coordinator)

MEDIA RELEASE :

The following is an extract from an article currently on the web-site of Cotton Australia:

"The most appropriate crops to grow with Australia's water are: .crops of the highest value. Water should be spent on the crops that deliver the best return to the farmer, the community and the national economy. Cotton generally returns more per megalitre than any other crop, contributes $1.5 billion a year in export earnings and employs 10,000 Australians?

Fair Water Use has asked Cotton Australia to respond to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2005-6) which clearly indicates that cotton is second only to rice in being the most inefficient method of converting water to a dollar?s worth of agricultural product, requiring 1925 litres of irrigated water to do so, as opposed to the average for all crops of 400 litres and 295 litres for agricultural commodities as a whole.

 MEDIA RELEASE

The comments ascribed to Senator Wong (Monday), in response to the latest grim Governmental report on the status of the Murray-Darling (Sunday), that the current crisis is a result of drought rather than over-extraction, is akin to a chicken farmer stating that the decimation of his flock is due to lack of eggs rather than the interventions of a fox which has taken up residence in the chook-pen. 

Is this really all that our water supremo has to offer, as the nation?s most significant waterways continue to collapse? At the risk of serial abuse of metaphor, perhaps it is time to reassign the deck-chairs on the grounded Titanic that is the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts - If only there were enough water....

The Murray-Darling requires visionary action and not prevarication. 

 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)