Labor's name is mud

THE former Soviet Union killed the Aral Sea, the fourth largest inland body of water.

The former Soviet Union killed the Aral Sea, the fourth largest inland body of water; Saddam Hussein destroyed the marshes at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, the largest wetlands ecosystem in the Middle East - and the ALP soon may have to take ultimate responsibility for killing the Murray-Darling, Australia's largest river system. Each of these three environmental disasters was caused by humans and each could have been prevented. The Soviets condemned the Aral Sea by diverting water in the 1930s to grow cotton as a much-needed cash crop. The continuing toll from this ecological tragedy is incalculable. Saddam destroyed marshes in his attempts to wipe out the Marsh Arabs who, with Kurds and other minorities, he saw as a threat. It is estimated by Human Rights Watch that, through draining the marshes, destroying villages and summary executions, Marsh Arab numbers have dwindled from more than 250,000 to as few as 40,000. The ALP has destroyed the Murray-Darling for pure political gain. After years of neglect and squabbling between rival states, the Howard government's first environment minister, Senator Robert Hill, began bringing competing interests to the table in a process that ended with former water minister Malcolm Turnbull's $10 billion package last year that could have eased pressure on the river's dwindling resources. That package was stymied by then Victorian Labor premier Steve Bracks for no good reason other than to deny the Howard government a political victory in an election year. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd put up the same package at a COAG meeting earlier this year. After Victorian Premier John Brumby extorted an extra billion or so, it proceeded, but without the urgency the Howard government believed was essential. Instead of tackling the plight of the Murray-Darling, a plight that could be remedied if the Rudd Government had the guts to take hard decisions to impose realistic solutions, the Government is mounting a massive campaign to impose a new economic regime on the nation in the name of global warming. This will have absolutely no effect on the world but has the capacity to destroy the Australian economy. Welcome to the ego-driven universe of the most arrogant and self-absorbed government this nation has ever suffered under. Prime Minister Rudd, Environment Minister Penny Wong and her useless sidekick Peter Garrett are ignoring the achievable and condemning the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Australians who make their livings in the Murray-Darling Basin. They are killing communities, wiping out towns in a fashion marginally less ruthless than that favoured by Saddam Hussein but, in the end, equally as destructive. The Lower Murray is now, to all intents and purposes, dead. The great lakes beside the Coorong are lower than sea level and bereft of the marine and bird life that once teemed there. The Coorong itself, the iconic setting for so much Australian folklore going back to the time of the Aboriginal people, is a spreading cancer of acid soils. Mr Rudd has posed for the cameras and blamed the disaster on global warming. That is fiction. Professor Ross Garnaut, his apocalyptic huckster, has repeated this convenient untruth. Further, the Rudd Government has embraced the fallacy that global warming is caused by carbon emissions and is demanding that Australians suffer economic hardship and sacrifice the prosperity of their nation to pursue a remedy for this falsehood. As David Evans, a former consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005 wrote in The Australian on Friday: "There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals suggest the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise''. The Australian public, he wrote, is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy. That alone won't stop the lunacy, but it should make thinking Australians who trusted the Rudd Government pause and it should, if they are intellectually honest, give them reason to check the data and reconsider whether their faith has been misplaced. There is no such uncertainty about the fate of the Murray. The river system depends on water flows being restored. It would be helped if it rained but, at the moment, rainfall has dropped to a level experienced prior to 1950 and demands upon the river's resources have increased beyond the capacity the system can reasonably support. Peter Cosier, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists director, pointed to the lack of political will earlier this year when he noted that a Murray-Darling agreement was reached by COAG in 2004 but no-one acted. "We know how to fix the problem,'' he said. "In fact we all agreed to a world-class reform package in 2004. We have $10 billion of Commonwealth money alone to lever the necessary change, so we can't blame the lack of money either. "The problem we all face is a political problem - the pace of these reforms is too slow. We are destroying the environment and we are destroying people.'' In the past week there was a demonstration at Goolwa. More protests are planned for the Riverlands and civil unrest will spread as the Murray dies, even though a solution is a penstroke away. The Rudd Government has, however, committed itself to a plan that will destroy Australia's natural economic advantage and do nothing for the planet. That is the inconvenient truth.