The Dispossession Agenda.

Review Of Political Parties Needed
Max Goulter ( Daily Advertiser 8.12.10 ).

I ask readers to cast their minds back to 2007. Which political party was in power at the time ?

The 2007 Water Act has rightfully been attacked by irrigation farmers and dryland farmers alike. It was passed by the then Liberal/National Howard government.

Mike Taylor, the MDBA chairman, stated that "The act that set up this authority was based on the Ramsar Convention of 1971."

When the Howard government passed it they were handing the Murray/Darling producers over to a program that threatens their livelihoods, and the food security which we have always enjoyed.

How many people realise that already, Australia is a net importer of food ? There used to be close to 200,000 family farmers in Australia, now there are just 80,000.

At Echuca last week, Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce and Sharman Stone were confronted by Aaron Isherwood of the CEC who asked them if they had read the water act.

Sharman Stone admitted that they designed the act, but blamed the MDBA's interpretation for the problems. This whole saga smells of hypocrisy. The party which was responsible for drafting the act sends their reps to the meetings who pose like the "white knights" who are going to save our struggling farmers from the Labor Party and the MDBA.

As many have already said, the whole water act needs to be rejected and a new one written because as it stands, it doesn't matter how much consultation goes on, the necessary changes that need to be made to it will never happen.

Our rivers are flooding, and still they say that our irrigation farmers cannot have any more water. The Green/Labor coalition is just continuing this foolishness.

It has got to the point that voting in the Lib/Nat government to get rid of Green/Labor is like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. We in the country need to take a good look at the track record of the people we have voted in over many years and assess the facts.