Alarm bells ringing as Coulton takes aim at mismanaging Government
21-October-2010
Federal Member for Parkes Mark Coulton has spoken in Federal Parliament, outlining his grave concerns for the future of the communities in the Parkes electorate, as the debate rages on following the release of the draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Mr Coulton has pulled no punches with regards to the possible ramifications facing the Parkes electorate, labelling it the most important issue in his time as Member.
“This is clearly one of the most pressing issues that we have ever faced in the Parkes electorate,” he said.
“There are alarm bells ringing at the moment.”
The major concern Mr Coulton has is with how poorly this entire process is being managed.
Mr Coulton pinpoints the decision by Water Minister Tony Burke to only now seek legal advice on whether the Authority has interpreted the Act correctly, and whether they are looking at this within the correct parameters as a disgrace.
“I think it would have been good to get that advice some time ago because the level of anger and unrest currently in the Basin is unacceptable,” he said.
Mr Coulton says that the bungled water buy-back scheme, which directly affected a number of communities in the Parkes electorate, is another example of poor management by this Government.
“Take the purchase of Toorale Station at Bourke which employed 100 people and accounted for 10 per cent of the revenue of the Bourke Shire Council as an example,” he said.
“The purchase of Toorale Station was supposedly going to be some benefit to the people of the Murray downstream. It had no benefit to them.”
Mr Coulton is concerned by the belief that increasing the level of water in one area of the Murray-Darling will positively affect others.
“There is an idea that the Murray-Darling Basin is a large, connected capillary system of water whereby if you do something here, something pops up over there,” he said.
“This case is a lot different. You physically cannot get that water down the river because the nature of the rivers is such that, once the water leaves, it will not come back.
“So the idea that large amounts of environmental water are going to solve all the problems is not right,” he concluded.