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Stand up and keep fighting

Since 2011, I have been advocating about the disgraceful Murray-Darling Basin Plan.I am a proud child sexual abuse survivor. My admiration goes to Julia Gillard and her government for announcing the child sexual abuse royal commission; this enabled me to come out about it, seek proper counselling and seek financial redress — meaning my life is drastically improved today.I have run a — up until this week — small Facebook page: Murray Darling Basin Connection. This page has been like a boutique page, but this week it has smashed its previous records and today has a total post reach of 436 000.I have not paid to boost any posts.So thank you to all the followers for your magnificent support.I must congratulate all the organisers and participants in the Convoy to Canberra, we were extremely noisy and extremely respectful and tidy — well done.I could tell you what is bad about the basin plan, but will just say that our rivers and natural environment are being destroyed under the ridiculous plan — along with farmers and communities being decimated — all so thousands of gigalitres can flow out to the ocean every year.Most people who don’t live in irrigation areas and mainly city people do not comprehend how much clean and safe food the basin irrigation schemes can produce.A lot of food in containers is now imported and a lot of that comes from China who repackage in other countries and use their names.China is one of five nations still irrigating with raw human effluent — you know, what we go to the toilet for — and are still using chemicals we banned decades ago.Our dairy industry is nearly completely obliterated, we have no car industry, irrigation farmers are on their knees and all our politicians and bureaucrats do is blame each other.I have been at this for eight years and will keep fighting — I would like all of you to as well.Peter Gilmour, Cobram