Democrats urge SA Govt to buy Cubbie Station

These two stories from ABC online show some of the stupidity of the factions in the south of Australia. For one Cubby Station's allocation is made from hundreds of smaller allocations they bought off others, and is not a huge amount of water in the larger scheme of things, and secondly, Queensland uses a tiny fraction of all the water from all the Murray-Darling river system FROM QUEENSLAND!!. I am sure it was about 10% of all the Queensland water used in Queensland in the mid to late 1990's. Lastly if you want to look at waste look at the aerial irrigation, flood irrigation and wasteful practices in southern NSW and Victoria. At least the QLD water provides a significant amount of export income from cotton, and it's not wasted on overstocked dairy paddocks...

1. Democrats urge SA Govt to buy Cubbie Station

Buying the Queensland cotton farm Cubbie Station is again being raised as a way to put water back into the River Murray for South Australia. The leader of the Australian Democrats in South Australia, Sandra Kanck, says the South Australian Government is clutching at straws by building a weir at Wellington.

She says joining with other states to buy Cubbie Station would provide about half the amount of water that the weir would and would cost about $130 million. "We really need to look at whether spending up to $300 million on a weir is a good use of taxpayers money," she said.

"The Democrats would argue that there are a whole lot of other ways that we can save water and make better use of the water we've got."

2. SA Govt slams Cubbie Station proposal

The South Australian Government says buying the Queensland cotton farm Cubbie Station would not help solve the state's water problems. The Democrats' state leader, Sandra Kanck, says South Australia could join with New South Wales and Queensland to buy the station for about $400 million. She says the Rann Government's share of about $130 million would be far cheaper than a weir at the end of the River Murray.

However the Minister for the River Murray, Karlene Maywald, says the suggestion demonstrates the Democrats' lack of understanding of the drought situation.

"The current drought situation means we could buy Cubbie Station, and Cubbie Station would be many many hundreds of millions of dollars, and we'd still have no water," she said. "It's ludicrous to expect that would be the silver bullet solution."

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