Government urged to give up on pipeline

How much more evidence does Victorian Premier John Brumby and the Labor Government need before it accepts it has made a terrible, dangerous mistake and finally walks away from the northsouth pipeline?

While Mr Brumby may have originally thought it was a good idea (let's give him the benefit of the doubt), there is such an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary now that any further efforts by Labor to push on with the idea can only be seen as bloody-minded politics.

Seventy per cent of Victorian councils have now voted for the government to think again about this, meaning that even most of Melbourne-based councils see the folly of the plan.

Murray-Darling Basin Commission has highlighted the massive disaster now faced on the Murray in South Australia if any more water is stolen from the basin

CSIRO evidence on climate change and water yield is alarming, with substantial reduction to the environment and consumptive use, this demonstrates the stupidity of a pipeline to Melbourne linked to a declining resource.

Running the pumps which will be needed to get water over the Great Divide will generate as much greenhouse gases as putting an extra 38 000 extra cars on Victorian roads every year.

Estimates of how much water would be able to be diverted from the Goulburn Valley have all been based on average rainfall over the past 100 years, not the much smaller amounts recorded in the past decade.

The Victorian Government's plans all talk about new water, when no such thing exists. All the water in the Murray-Darling Basin finds its way to the Murray and to South Australia, and taking 75 000 Ml out of the basin to Melbourne is robbing it from the environment and from irrigators.

Melbourne could solve much of its own water supply uncertainties by recycling much more of its own water, rather than pumping it into Port Phillip Bay or Bass Strait.

The auditor-general has recently released a damaging criticism of the foodbowl process, the lack of genuine consultation, the lack of a business plan and no substantiation of the projected savings.

The losses in this season of Goulburn-Murray Water is in the vicinity of as low as 400 Gl, less than half the losses projected by the foodbowl proponents of 800 to 900 Gl.

The premier should now evaluate this new evidence and reconsider the environmentally and economically unsustainable pipeline to Melbourne.

Laurie Maxted

Durham Ox

National park rules are too strict

I wish to reply to Patricia Cameron's letter (Country News, May 19) saying she was sorry I am so ill disposed toward camping groups in the Barmah State Forest.

Her head is buried obviously in her green smoke as I am not opposed to people camping anywhere in the Barmah forest, doing precisely what they want.

I do, however, object to my fellow Australians being restricted by the laws that a national park implementation brings.

No dogs, $120 fine. No boats, launching only in designated areas, $80 fine.

Camping only in designated areas, and look out if you have a horse tethered at your camp, $140 fine.

No campfires, $80 fine.

Add to this a $4 entry fee at the gate.

Movement through the forest restricted to made tracks.

No hunting allowed, all things that I cherish and hard won by our pioneers and all free at the moment.

Add to this the cattle grazing which does not destroy the environment as she suggested, and if she and her green mates stop and do the math 996 000 acres x 900 cattle equates to one cow to every 1106 acres or four dairy farms, would not inflict any threatening damage, or threaten any species at all.

The so called environmentalist, Nicholas Roberts and his mob, would have us believe that these big horned, hairy monsters, do untold damage to the forest, given the numbers, is nothing but a bloody myth.

Speedboats, jet skis, trail bikers, and lack of understanding of this place by Parks Victoria, inflicts more damage on the bush than any de-horned, grass eating, cow.

When will these people realise, a healthy forest is a working forest and that includes the select cutting of timber to ensure that re-growth trees can have a chance to maintain the forest.

I've seen with my own eyes the effects on the bush the huge sucker infestation is having out there, basically choking some land and creek areas.

I've offered to debate Nicholas Roberts, and the Pattys on these issues, but to no avail.

I believe they are either scared to debate me, eyeball to eyeball, on the Barmah forest or their arrogance won't permit it.

Max Schier

Shepparton