Not here to talk politics
IN reply to Geoff Kendell’s letter published in the Gannawarra Times on April 27.
Your letter indicates the 100 year olds you refer to know nothing about the Gunbower Island projects.
Myself and possibly 20 other people, who know the island intimately, are local people, consulting to the NCCMA and Parks Victoria, and indeed all of these projects were proposed by us over a period of about 30 years.
We are wanting as much knowledge as possible to keep the park alive and improving.
The amount of nonsense spread by people, and believed by others, is an embarrassment to us, the local people on these advisory groups.
We advise the people at NCCMA. They in return use their knowledge of flora and fauna and use our knowledge on how to handle the water flows.
We do not write ill-informed information, we spend our time helping and using all our knowledge to get our beautiful island’s trees and wetlands back to as healthy as we can with what we have, and this is happening.
Parks Victoria and NCCMA take our knowledge and use it wisely and are a great bunch of people to deal with, which I have done for a minimum of 30 years. We are restoring our local wetlands and if any of your members would like a boots-on-the-ground explanation or a personal tour to report the true facts to you, so you can report back to your group, I would be happy to give a talk at one of your meetings.
We are not interested in politics, but we talk to politicians and shire councillors individually and let them know what we are doing. This allows them to join us in the project and they appreciate this. Most of our committees have a shire councillor or politician on them.
All of the improvements to our parks and wetlands in this area have been community driven for the last 30 years and competed successfully.
A selection of them, starting from the east: Kanyapella Basin, Richardsons Lagoon, Hird Swamp, and McDonald Swamp. All are now managed by NCCMA and all have positive outcomes. Some have management problems, such as too much cumbungi. These are being addressed but if you have any thoughts to beat this problem, please let us know.
The worst problem is people – bureaucrats getting these projects approved by other people who have very little knowledge of what happens in the swamp.
By the wording of your letter, you are trying to sabotage these works that have been done to improve our wetland projects.
If you have problems with what we are doing, please feel free to criticise us and give us your solutions instead of telling a politician, who doesn’t know a gumtree from a box tree, what the problem is.
Please come to me with your problem, but I also ask you to bring the solution. We do not spend our time criticising, we spend it on projects that may or may not go ahead, or take five years or longer.
We are proud of what we have achieved to date and if I live long enough, we may get recognised by the community.
These projects, initial surveys and designs were donated by Archard’s Irrigation at no cost to the CMA and Parks and we modified them as needed.
To get the results we have today, and there are still projects that can improve three more swamps on our area, we will leave you to look after the politics.
We want to get our parks and wetlands in the best order as possible. Don’t expect me to talk politics, they are banned at my talks.
Stanley Archard AM,
Cohuna
Prepared to
fight for future
FIRSTLY, congratulations to Southern Riverina Irrigators (SRI) and their chairman Chris Brooks for the way they are prepared to fight for our region’s future.
It must be a lonely battle, because they don’t get much support from those who should be doing the fighting.
What sought of help have they had from our federal Member for Farrer Sussan Ley? In a nutshell, none. She has been our local member throughout the Murray-Darling Basin Plan disaster and has been totally ineffective in representing our interests.
Our new Senator Perin Davey understands the issues being faced, but her leader Michael McCormack and fellow parliamentarian Keith Pitt (the present Water Minister) are hardly jumping out of their skins to support her or our region.
As for the farming representative bodies, National Irrigators Council and NSW Irrigators Council, the least said the better. They seem more concerned with their political mates than our future.
As a result, SRI has to ask landholders to dip into their pockets, yet again, just so it is able to fight the politicians and every other self-interested individual and organisation, many of them prepared to sacrifice the NSW Murray for their own personal gain.
And for as long as we’re prepared to give the government a safe seat of Farrer, nothing will change. Perhaps that needs to be hammered home to those who keep voting for the same and watching as we get delivered the same, year after year.
In the meantime, until we get a marginal seat or a local member and farming bodies who will genuinely fight for us, we have to do the fighting ourselves.
So, I would encourage everyone to make their contribution to SRI, as requested, so they can continue their good work.
I know it’s wrong that we should have to pay when others should be doing a lot of the heavy lifting for us. But that’s the reality we’re facing, so we just have to suck it up until our futures are secured.
Laurie Beer,
Mayrung, NSW
