Genocidalists impose water restrictions on food producers during flood

Like the Tantalus of Greek mythology chained in Hades out of reach of an abundant feast, long-suffering South Australian irrigators are being forced to watch the overflowing Murray River rush by, but leave untouched one-third of the water they need to grow food and to which they are legally entitled.

With the Murray already full and flowing out to sea through the lower lakes and Coorong, and warnings that a repeat of South Australia’s devastating 1956 flood could be on the way, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood cut through the confusion and declared the situation wasn’t simply insane, it was intentionally genocidal.

“It is genocide to restrict food production during a time when not only is the world facing a food shortage, but Australia too faces a severe food shortage from flood damage on the eastern seaboard and in northern Western Australia,” he stated.

“But this latest case is no mere restriction; it is central to the genocidal drive to smash the Murray-Darling Basin as a food bowl by British imperialists who are determined to depopulate Australia and crush any remnants of Australian sovereignty.”

Mr Isherwood continued, “The tormented irrigators are family farmers of our national food bowl, the producers of the nation’s food supply, who have barely held on through a decade of drought exacerbated by water restrictions for phoney ‘environmental flows’, but now when they finally have an opportunity to replenish their land and grow full crops, they are being blocked.

“The state governments of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia which are enforcing these restrictions are complicit in destroying Australia’s hard-won national food security.

“The only logic to this restriction, is to enforce the agreements that underpin the private water trading system, which from its inception was promoted by Prince Philip’s Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists as a key weapon in its drive to smash the food bowl.

“The private water trading system has profited parasitic corporate speculators such as Macquarie Bank and, before it went bankrupt, Babcock & Brown—whose former water trading specialist David Green is a member of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority!—but driven family farmers off the land or to suicide,” he charged. “The actual intent behind all this insanity is not ‘profits’, but genocide, as in the repeated, openly expressed aim of Prince Philip’s Green lobby to slash Australia’s population from its current 22.5 million down to 5-6 million.”

Even though the drought is well-and-truly broken, the four Murray-Darling Basin states are insisting on sticking to an agreement struck during the drought, which set a cap on the total amount of water able to be drawn in each state for irrigation. However, on a technicality, South Australia’s irrigators are being limited to just 67 per cent of their allocation, forcing them to spend millions each month buying water from interstate, while the river rushes by.

South Australian farmers require a mere 186 gigalitres to reach their 100 per cent entitlement, which represents only two days flows (90 GL per day) of the swollen Murray River. Ironically, University of Adelaide ecologist David Paton has warned the flows are so strong that they could have a harmful effect on wildlife in the Lower Lakes.

Mr Isherwood concluded, “It is up to the people of Australia to demand the various governments protect our food security and the family farmers who provide it. The CEC is leading that fight—join us.”