Our reminder letter to the Politicians regarding the Murray Darling Report

Wednesday, 18 August 2010 14:55

Today the following reminder was sent to the Water Minister (Senator Wong) and the respective spokespeople for the Coalition (Senator Joyce) and the Greens (Senator Hanson-Young).

Dear Senators,

Earlier in the election campaign I wrote on behalf of ComeOnAustralia.com informing you of our new on-line petition asking each of you to facilitate the release of the Murray-Darling report. You each have also received our media release on this issue asking the Government to address six simple questions on the Murray-Darling.

As we now know, the issue of caretaker convention is a furphy (if the Authority is independent the Convention does not apply) and, of course, under caretaker convention the report can be directed to be released by mutual consent of the Government and Opposition to the use of the Minister's powers of direction under the Water Act.

So far we have not received a response from you to our request.

To his credit we have received a response from Mr Greg Hunt MP, the Coalition's Environment spokesperson confirming that the Coalition want the Report released now and will do so if they are elected. We also note that both Senator Joyce and Senator Hanson-Young have publicly called for the report to be released.

We are particularly concerned that the Government (as the incumbent) says a sustainable Australia is an important issue, but they won't release this already overdue report and they have an un-costed water promise as a result.

We would like to tell our petitioners and the wider subscription list of ComeOnAustralia.com what your response is to the failure to release this report so affected communities can assess the respective Party's policies on the Murray-Darling.

I send this note as a courtesy reminder, before we notify our subscribers and interested third parties of your responses. If you can please respond by COB Thursday we will inform our network on Friday.

An identical letter has been sent to each of the Labor, Green and Coalition spokespeople.