If you thought any good news in Australia was being swept away by the COVID-19 virus then you obviously have not heard that in the last week water has been re-filling Lake Wetherell - the major storage lake of the Menindee Lakes system - for the first time in three years.
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Locals have been rejoicing. The Barrier Daily Truth, the region's main newspaper, reported last Thursday that Water NSW estimates 230 to 260 gigalitres will reach Lake Wetherall over the coming weeks and months. Inflow estimates translated to about 12 months of water supply for the lower Darling. It was the first water in three years to come into the lakes system. It has meant, as the BDT reported, good news for local fish rescue volunteers and in the last week saw the return of huge numbers of bird life. But it is not all good news and will not be until we achieve the transformation of water management in this nation.
While the water flowed for the first time in three years, it should now have been in flood but the vast majority of the flow was siphoned off in Queensland and northern NSW before it even reached the Darling/Baaka rivers. Not for the first time has water "disappeared", been stolen or bought off from rivers within the national system.
This is what Ian Sutton, who organised the recent Wilcannia protest about water management, said: "People are in absolute distress. They are on the verge of rebellion. The water is controlled by market forces that always lead to the rich. Black or white, we're all in the same boat and we will take this no more."
Kempsey man Mark Merritt, who attended the Wilcannia rally which closed the bridge with police assistance for six hours, said: "Everyone in Australia, everyone in Parliament, all the irrigators - they know what's happening to the Darling/Baaka is wrong; last year the biggest buyer of our water, our most productive water, was a foreign country."
When I was in the region late last year, it was clear current governments are not being transparent nor concerned about people or justice.
Rob McBride, from Tolarno Station on the lower Darling, pointed to the "disappearance" of 90 per cent of flood water: "It is all about corruption, it is as simple as that."
There's more disgraceful stuff known to our governments and parliaments and nothing being done by the majority about it! Independent NSW MP Justin Field has obtained controversial water-sharing plans for the lower Darling River that will not be audited, nor even reviewed for up to 17 years.
"This government does not like independent scrutiny because when we have it, everything the government does is found to be dodgy," Field told the BDT, which reported that major decisions remain about pumping decisions that allowed northern rivers irrigators to take the first flows from floods that were meant to fill the Darling River.
In a blistering attack in the same issue of the BDT, Shooters, Farmers and Fishers MP Roy Butler said: "The public places a degree of trust in government. In the water management space, this trust has been eroded. The only way we can return to a position of trust in our water management, and ensure the balance between the social, economic and environmental outcomes is improved, is through a federal Royal Commission."
While that is an option, there is in place an investigatory committee headed by former Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty ready to go - but it is painfully obvious the federal government and the states are delaying it from reaching a conclusion. Why? When I was in the region late last year, it was clear current governments are not being transparent nor concerned about people or justice. It's a rort to rival the sports rorts issue, but possibly worse because it effects people's lives.
Talking about people's lives, ABC chairman Ita Buttrose got it right when she said mixed signals from governments on the COVID-19 threat are not helpful for the public. Buttrose asked what many have put to this column - the PM sends the community messages, but so to do the premiers ... "there are too many people and voices", Buttrose said.
COVID-19 is international, it needs national direction and leadership - a united voice. Buttrose has a fair idea what she is talking about, because she led the AIDS/HIV national public education campaign in 1984-88 at the invitation of the Hawke Labor government. The campaign, Buttrose reminded us this week, spoke for all Australians, and was consistent: "It was a national bipartisan approach."