Eureka flags?
HAVE you seen those blue flags with a white Southern Cross up and down the Murray Valley Highway?
The flag itself was used by gold miners in Ballarat in 1854, who were tired of being charged by the government for the right to prospect for gold.
The Eureka rebellion was born, and the miners voted to fight to defend their rights and liberties under the Eureka Flag.
Not dissimilar to what is going on now in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB), where irrigators are required to pay for the right to irrigate and not get the water they pay for.
Water has become the new gold.
Scott Morrison and Michael McCormack have demonstrated abject ignorance of the quiet devastation being imposed over the past decade, particularly on Southern Riverina irrigation communities.
Their total lack of leadership on this matter is despite numerous fruitless meetings.
The Water Act of 2007 allowed dissociation from land and has allowed water to be traded as a commodity and investors to hold food and fibre production to ransom.
A basic human need is now largely being controlled by corporate and international investors and the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, who correct their own homework of mismanagement.
That is on top of unmonitored floodplain harvesting, no transparency of water ownership and accusations of government insider trading – all the while continuing to spend billions of taxpayers dollars with no regard for accountability.
Well I have had enough and I am not going to be paying my water rates nor my Gannawarra shire rates due to my personal stand on this issue.
However, I will be requesting Goulburn Murray Water and the Gannawarra Shire Council take a public stand on this matter to call for a Federal Royal Commission into the Murray Darling Basin Plan and the management of the MBD Authority on just terms.
If you feel strongly enough about the future of your community, I would invite you to consider withholding your payments and to fly a Eureka flag in support of the injustice this MDB Plan has imposed on our community.
Doug Fehring,
Cohuna
Saddened by resignation
Reading of the resignation from Gannawarra Shire Council of Cr Mark Arians has saddened many in our community.
As a member for the Patchell Ward, Cr Arians has worked tirelessly, not just for the residents of Kerang, but for the whole Gannawarra Shire, for seven years.
Cr Arians has always been approachable, willing to listen and a hard-working councillor, who has encouraged and helped many in the community to achieve their goals.
His involvement in and with many local organisations has been shire-wide.
In particular in Kerang, Cr Arians has been an active supporter of the Gannawarra Toy Run, the Show and Shine Committee and its aims, the Kerang New Year’s Eve ‘Party in the Park’ and the Kerang Progress Association.
Cr Arians and his valuable contributions will be sorely missed.
Thank you for those seven years.
We hope that you will continue to be a force for good in our community.
Kerang Progress Association
Permanent duck shooting ban needed
In response to the article ‘Hunting for answers’ – Gannawarra Times, Tuesday, February 11,
Water bird numbers have been at their lowest point in the last 37 years all across Australia, as recent aerial studies have indicated.
There is no water anywhere for waterbird species to propagate.
In light of the devastating bushfires a great many habitats have been destroyed to the point that some native species have been all but been wiped out.
Some species have been completely destroyed along with their habitats, like some koala populations.
It is high time that the Victorian government put a permanent ban on duck shooting once and for all before some bird species become critically endangered or worse, extinct.
Time and time again duck shooters have proven they have no respect for the habitat they shoot on, not to mention the untold casualties of birds that are not even duck species which have perished.
I have been a rescuer of Victorian waterbirds for the past 24 years.
What I have witnessed in the wetlands of not only Kerang but Donald, Sale and other areas continues to disgust, sicken and horrify me.
Field and Game Australia are continuously patting themselves on the back claiming to be “conservationists” for putting up nesting boxes, planting habitat, cleaning wetlands of lignum and declaring themselves to be “responsible hunters.”
I beg to differ.
Birds with shattered bills, slow strangulation, terrible pellet wounds to fragile wings, legs and bodies, nests being deliberately trodden on, Aboriginal middens and mounds being trampled, hundreds of shotgun shells and rubbish discarded are some of the many examples of damage that duck shooters do every year that a season is declared.
Just what does it take for the government to finally hold a moratorium or put a permanent ban on this obscenity once and for all?
I would like to know where the fantastic claim of “a $106 million regional industry” has come from, as quoted in the article?
In my 24 years of rescuing waterbirds I have never seen duck shooters contributing to regional towns apart from the local pubs.
Some 90 per cent of duck shooters come from Melbourne.
They are entirely self sufficient, buying their supplies in Melbourne, where it is a lot cheaper, then camping on designated wetlands – legally or otherwise.
These are my personal observations over the years.
Duck shooters do not help struggling regional towns at all.
This is a farce and a fallacy.
Any local duck shooters shoot on private land away from the opening and closing weekends due to public liability and safety issues relating to other duck shooters.
The Member for Northern Victoria Tim Quilty is quoted as stating: “Ducks are not at risk.”
I would beg to differ.
What does he say about the declining numbers of Blue Winged Shovelers, Blue Billed Duck and Musk Duck numbers?
What does he say to the fact that the Blue Winged Shoveler has been banned from being a game species since 2016 yet it is still shot at, wounded and killed?
Musk Duck and Blue Billed Duck are a protected species, as is the Freckled Duck – one of the 10 rarest waterbird species in the world.
Yet every year these birds are brought out by the hundreds by rescuers.
In surrounding paddocks there are no waterbird numbers to be seen as there once were some 24 years ago.
Waterbirds cleanse crops of insects that would otherwise devastate these.
Due to the lack of water the few waterbird species I have observed are being forced into coming closer to regional towns to find food they would normally catch in the 20,000 wetlands of Victoria.
Thousands of these wetlands have ceased to exist since the Millenial drought began.
For a duck shooting season to go ahead in light of the devastating drought and fires would be the most reprehensible, morally, and ethically wrong decision imaginable with the potential to create a national wildlife emergency.
It is time for the government to place an immediately effective and permanent ban on duck shooting in this state.
The lives of dwindling numbers of waterbirds are at stake.
Kate Bossence,
Kerang
