Two letters to The Daily Advertiser in the past week by writers from southern Riverina towns, Deniliquin and Cobram, appropriately headed in each case, Sold Down the River and Water Support Needed, send a powerful message to candidates in the federal election about water and how this nation must manage it. Not helping the situation, and in the same week, was the publication in newspapers across the state of recent changes to federal electorate boundaries, particularly in relation to our state's major irrigation areas and inland river systems.
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To those letters first. Peter Gilmour (Cobram) wrote, appropriately, that "most politicians can't see past the next election". Gilmour wrote about a recent trip to Broken Hill and Menindee Lakes and the abuse of the River Darling system by "idiotic narrow-minded people for their own agenda".
"Farmers and communities in the basin are in survival mode when at this time they should be relishing in the income from irrigated agriculture". Gilmour asked: "What (has) happened to the irrigated food bowl we already have - the Murray Darling Basin?" Gilmour lashes the Greens because of the environmental destruction they helped cause in the Menindee Lakes and the Basin. But they are not alone. The "idiot" governments of Queensland who allowed great chunks of water to be dragged out of the system before it ever got to the Lakes, underlines the real constitutional issues this nation will face unless we rein in the power of the states.
Vicki Meyer (Deniliquin) quoted Ricegrowers Association of Australia's executive director, Andrew Bomm who delivered a stinging assessment of MP Sussan Ley's "efforts in the water debate so far" and her lack of support for "our region's food producers".
Meyer, not unreasonably, wants all organisations representing rice growers and food producers to pressure Ley and other government colleagues in this election "to address the flawed Murray-Darling Basin Plan". It can be added that every elector has a responsibility to hold each candidate to account about the nation's future water policies. The pressure, as Meyer alludes to, is right on Ley because her expanded Farrer electorate keeps the southern Murray irrigation areas but, from this election, takes (from Michael McCormack's Riverina electorate) the irrigation areas of the mighty MIA and CIA. While Meyer has gone into bat for the Murray Valley what she wrote applies to every single river valley and potential food production area in the nation. "There has been a failure to acknowledge that ... we cannot afford to lose more productive water, or those left in the system cannot be viable."
"Every megalitre lost increases the burden to run the system on those who are left".
Gilmour reckons this election is about voting for Australia as a massive food producer; but, what have we got so far - submarines, negative gearing and more dodging and weaving from the major parties, especially the government, about those colossal cheats, the tax-evading multinationals.
Barnaby Joyce was here during the week promising help and offering platitudes but, as Gilmour wrote, he is a member of the government that began the MDB scam.
Ismail Serageldin, the great Egyptian expert on water, rural development and sustainability said: "More than one-half of the world's major rivers are being seriously depleted and polluted, degrading and poisoning the surrounding eco-systems, thus threatening the health and livelihood of people who depend on them for irrigation, drinking and industrial water".