WHEN I read an ABC article featuring what they referred to as “waterlogged land” in South Australia’s south-east being turned into an “agricultural engine room”, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
If there had been sufficient research for this article, the author would have discovered that these south-east drains are the primary reason for the environmental degradation of the Coorong, which led to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
So now, we channel water from Hume and Dartmouth dams to the Lower Lakes, Coorong and Murray Mouth to try to repair the damage that has been caused by the very state that wants upstream communities to come to their rescue.
And it’s all at the cost of agriculture, jobs and prosperity upstream, in particular the mid-Murray regions in Victoria and NSW, not to mention increased prices at the supermarket for everyone.
Effectively, South Australians want the eastern states to repair their damage by demanding that undeliverable volumes are sent down the Murray River, and with clever political tactics they have conned the Federal Government into acquiescing.
The Sydney-based new Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek is complicit in a plan that Australians will live to regret.
There’s a saying that “you can’t have your cake and eat it too”.
It seems that does not apply if you are in South Australia.
Shelley Scoullar,
Albury
