The Mass Strike: First they wanted to tax CO2, now they want to TAKE YOUR FOOD AWAY!
The release of the Murray Darling Basin Authority's 'Guide to the Plan' has already made clear in the minds of Australians outside of the City bubble that cuts to water allocations will destroy them, and therefore our farms, and the nation's food security. BUT, will the line "they'll do it anyway" allow this genocide to go through? That depends on our leadership role. The LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) reaped harvest from the 9-10 Oct. Victorian seminar and especially of our own work on producing a Google Earth overview of the Bradfield, Reid, Clarence River and Fitzroy River Schemes, and made a sharp intervention at the Murray Darling Basin Authority "public consultation" meetings held in Shepparton (VIC), Deniliquin and Griffith (NSW).
Shepparton
Each town had two meetings: from 9am-12pm, and 2pm-5pm. Kat and Doug arrived in time for the second Shepparton meeting and were surprised at the turnout. We had several hundred colour flyers, "Build the Clarence River Scheme" on the front with an image of the Clarence River Scheme, made by LYM member Lars Thystrup on Google Earth; on the back was the Oct 8th press release "Murray-Darling shutdown interferes with nature; who benefits?". The meetings were run by the bureaucrats of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA). For the first hour of the meeting, they ran through powerpoint slides of what the plan is, and why it's needed; essentially academic sophistry to try to fool the people that killing them is good for them, and that they really care what people think about the plan. Then they open the floor for questions.
One guy characterised it well, saying he saw a funeral procession pass through town this morning, and thought "geez they've started already, and the plan hasn't even begun yet!" A woman from Environment Victoria said, "Now just remember why we're doing this: we're doing this for environmental flows." The flavour of the questions was around the idea that the plan was inevitable, we can't do anything about it.
Then Kat asked about the Clarence River scheme, "Why don't we look at taking some of the flood water from the Clarence and send it into the Darling River?" The 'crats tried to bat away the question, saying those schemes don't work. Kat got a round of applause for her question, and it heightened and shaped the level of discussion afterwards as two old men expressed support for what Kat said before asking their questions, although later one woman, a 'water writer' was forced to register her dislike for it, by saying how we have to protect the pristine rivers, and that we should consult the community in the Clarence River region, to see what they think about it (hmm, like this maybe: "Do you like being flooded?"!)
Afterwards Kat and Doug handed out flyers outside. Because Kat had asked a question, people were familiar with the literature, and could see we were on their side. Doug got an email address from a farmer couple who said that if this plan goes through, they would have to halve their number of cattle from 600 to 300, and sack 2 workers. Kat got contacts by telling people we will send them a DVD of a video we are producing now on the Clarence River scheme.
Kat went back inside and spoke to one of the MDBA-crats. The stupid woman asked Kat if the rivers on the image even existed, implying that we made them up! (And she should know which rivers are in the Basin!) She also argued with Kat about taking water from the Clarence River, and Kat stressed to her, "No, it's flood water!" "Isn't it natural to have flood water every 7 years, to deal with salinity?" the woman asked.
Deniliquin
Four members of the LYM arrived just in time for question time at the afternoon meeting. At the morning meeting, 1000 people got inside before they shut the doors, then the 300 outside showed how angry they were at being locked out by burning the report! The afternoon meeting was attended by 500 people. At least one CEC supporter was at each of these meetings. The audience were much more angry at the 'crats than in Shepparton. There was a spotlight on the speaker on stage, like in comedy acts; "Oh that looks like a target," said one person.
The first question was "You haven't given people a chance to read the report—how do you expect this to be an accountable process?" Another man proposed dams by bringing water from the north and building infrastructure.
Lars asked a question on the Clarence River scheme, "You're willing to spend all this money to shut down the basin, but why don't we build the Clarence River Scheme to increase the water and develop the basin?" He got a round of applause.
In their answer they referred to their answer to the man earlier: "Locals won't be happy, you're stealing their water."
Glen made a statement: "I'm Glen Isherwood from the Citizens Electoral Council. I just want to point out an irony on this but I don't think it's that funny. All the discussion on this has been about cutting water, that's the whole reason we're here. Everyone smells it, they know the water's going to be cut, and it makes no sense, because what you actually have is, water flows out to sea, it's natural, rivers are not always full of water. If you don't build dams there, if you don't build infrastructure, the water's just gonna dry up and flow out to sea. And here we're talking about a 'natural' flow of these rivers, And so in droughts in the ‘20s, in droughts before, the rivers dried up, and what I want to point out as an irony, is, we can increase the water flow in the Murray-Darling Basin, there's a gentlemen up the back there who talked about building the Clarence Scheme, another gentlemen here talked about building real infrastructure projects over the long term. And you know that'll cost a few billion dollars, but what it does, is it increases the productivity of the country. That's the governments' business! And what they're saying is we're going to allow our productive food bowl to collapse, they're going to allow our food to be imported from overseas, ("if you can buy it", one audience member nearby said) and it's a complete waste. This is the problem. I think the panel up here has started from the wrong beginning. They've started with a view of cutting water, because they were asked to, and so I just want to point out, if you guys are handling the prescriptions, and the patient's coming to you for the medication, I think we need to get a better doctor. (A few laughs in agreement, applause.)
400-500 flyers were distributed and several contacts made. Then on to Griffith.
Griffith
The LYM were joined by three CEC activists, one who had printed 5000 flyers in colour, and organised some ladies from the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Group to help with handing out. The crowd was estimated to be 5,000 and close to 4,000 flyers were distributed. Marquees were erected outside the main venue to accommodate the crowd and in each was mounted a screen linking them into the main event. But even the marquees didn't accommodate all the crowd, which flowed into the car-park. We handed a bunch of flyers to someone and they would take one and pass the pile down the line. A couple of times on the screen in the marquee, our flyer was so visible in the hands of people you could almost read the print. One man had our flyer in his hand while speaking on the microphone—in fact when most people put their hands up, they had our flyer in their hands!
From the very start the air was almost electric with the underlying rage. The speakers were booed, and the audience ridiculed them when given the opportunity. When Mike Taylor, Chief MDBA-crat tried to find a specific slide, he apologised for fumbling through the slide show, and one man said "Yeah well you're doing well at fumbling everything else!" They cut down the presentation time, and started the questions after 30 minutes.
One of the CEC supporters got to raise the Clarence River scheme when he spoke to the meeting. He pointed out that the brains behind the draft plan were in their 30s and 10 years ago they would have just been leaving their indoctrination at Uni. (This got some laughs.) Since then the country has been in drought so these people have known nothing else. Their assumptions on the MD system are false. He then quoted a recent article from the paper that was not driven by a preconceived ideology, which he considered to be factual. Then he pointed out that building infrastructure to drought proof was the solution and explained how he used the dry period to clean out his dams and build new ones on his property, all of which are now full due to the rain. Instead of taking a regressive position on the basin and rationing water there needs to be more infrastructure and an increase in the volume of water. This could be done by building the Clarence River Scheme which was designed by former Snowy engineers in order to flow water from the coast into the MD system. This was very well received by the crowd.
Other angry points made by the audience:
- One man spoke of people being "on the edge of despair," and that there'll be a rise in prescriptions after this meeting, and people will take their own lives, "how can you guys sleep at night?"
- "How can you make a recommendation taking water from us if you're an outsider? If you're not making a living out of the farming community, come and live here a while?"
- "You've made no provision for looking after businesses if they fall over, but you've made provision for frogs and birds who go elsewhere if there's no water."
- "The whole Murray-Darling region and everyone that's going to be affected, what are they going to lose? Lives, families, jobs, businesses. We are going to take you to the biggest court case in the land... for having idiots like you on the biggest payroll ever that we can only dream of having one day, telling us 'we're gonna destroy your town.' If I were you, I wouldn't wait till 2 or 3 o'clock. Get in your cars and get the f___ out of here now!" This guy then went outside and started burning the report! People followed him out and soon there was a big pile of about 200 of them.
The mass strike phenomenon is building but then came the threat; the fact that the banks are losing patience and will have to start foreclosing. Mike Taylor tried to say that he has urged the banks not to foreclose on anyone, but don't count on that happening unless the HBPB and Glass-Steagall is brought in.
Our supporter spoke to reporters from the Weekly Times and The Australian and also received a call from The Land during the proceedings but they couldn't hear each other due to the noise of the meeting.
Afterwards the LYM continued to get flyers out to people as they left, with Doug telling people who already had one: "The government is trying to kill you. Join the CEC's fight to stop them." We got 8 contacts, with people keen to see the video. One person put in $10 for the HBPB DVD. Another man took a flyer and said it would photocopy it in colour and give to 40 of his clients.
As we left town, we took photos of signs out the front of businesses: Elders IXL, the local Ford and Toyota dealers, etc, both saying they would be closed Thursday morning to go to the seminar, or just in support of farmers and against the plan. People turned up from banks, or from work in uniforms in solidarity with the farmers, because they know this will kill them.
Only our leadership to lift the level of discussion will win this fight. As the rage of the people increases, the Gillard government would be crazy to push it through. But given that we're on the verge of hyperinflation, and what we know of this government already, that's just what they'll do. And don't think the independents will just listen to the people; the mass strike must make them fear their job security before they get the message.
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A sign seen as you enter Griffith.
LYM member Katherine Isherwood raising the Clarence River Scheme at Shepparton.
The audience who could fit inside, at Griffith.
More of the Griffith audience in the car park.
More again...
Burning MDBA reports at Griffith.
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