It also wants the government to fund new ads highlighting community concerns about the basin plan.
The Murray Regional Strategy Group has submitted formal complaints to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
The complaints relate to the government’s Murray-Darling Basin ad, which warns “the rivers may run dry” if more water isn’t secured for the basin.
MRSG has joined the chorus of farm groups and MPs slamming the ad as inaccurate and misleading.
MRSG has asked for the following actions:
- The Federal Government be ordered to withdraw the advertisement in question and apologise for misleading the Australian people.
- The Federal Government be ordered to spend equal or greater funds on an advertising campaign which highlights community concerns with basin plan implementation, as highlighted, and ordered that this campaign to be coordinated in conjunction with, and with advice from, Murray Regional Strategy Group.
“The advertising campaign is a blatant misuse of taxpayer money and I think the public deserves to know who authorised it,” MRSG chair Geoff Moar said.
“We are concerned at the inaccuracies and emotive language used in the advertisement, which appears to be a government attempt to politicise a serious issue for regional communities, the environment and farm prosperity.”
Mr Moar said the only conclusion his organisation can draw from the reasoning behind the advertising campaign is that it is a brazen attempt by the government to win environmental votes or sympathy through misleading propaganda.
He scoffed at claims in the advertisement “if we don’t act it could ... affect the drinking water of more than three million Australians”.
“During the millennium drought the main issue with water supply was in Adelaide, and this has been mitigated with construction of a desalination plant, at huge taxpayer expense.”
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