Members of the the arch-conspiracy theorizing fringe political party the Citizen’s Electoral Council give formal evidence at the House Standing Committee Inquiry into the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan on regional Australia at its Gunnedah hearing on 14 Feb 2011 (the highlighting is mine):
Mr Witten—I am also an irrigator and a patriotic Australian. We have some key issues here. Australia’s climate has, as Dorothea Mackellar wrote, ‘droughts and flooding rains’. I do not care how many dams you have, especially the current amount of dams, as an old bloke once said to me, ‘If the head of the Condamine is not running, how do you expect to have water at Echuca?’ It is a pretty fair comment. That is just a common-sense approach. I do not believe in the Darwin theory. I believe that man was born in the image of God and the difference between man and an animal is the fact that a man has the power to create change. He can change for good or he can change for bad. In this particular instance he has the option of either shutting down the Murray-Darling Basin, which is the agenda set by the Ramsar convention—which was not even an Australian founded argument—or he can put more water into the system. I believe that all politicians and all governments should do what is right for the nation and I believe that the growing of a nation is very important. Anyone in the farming game knows that if you are not going forward you are going back. We have this power to create a situation where instead of destroying the Murray Darling system, and the people along it, we can actually make it flourish. There are things such as the Clarence River scheme, which was mooted some 70 or 80 years ago by some idiot called Bradfield—and of course you know he was not very bright or did not have much ability. Nevertheless, he dreamt up a massive scheme to develop this nation. It seems to me that as we have gone along signing all these damned agreements, going along with all these international agreements, we are actually driving this nation backwards. To me, that is not the moral standard that any government that loves its nation and believes in the sovereignty of the nation should play with. It is as immoral as trying to mine the Liverpool Plains. These sorts of things cannot be tolerated. If they are, then I am very sorry but the government of the day are not patriotic Australians. The use of the Clarence River scheme, we believe, would inject around a thousand gigalitres into the system, plus provide electricity for our dying power supply. We used to have a ministry for decentralisation once. Everyone is leaving the bush because of these damned erratic agreements that we signed with people that have no intention of ever seeing a nation grow. If we do not grow we die. It is as simple as that. Therefore, I think the government has a moral duty to revisit the 2007 Water Act. I believe it is totally unworkable and not in the interests of the nation.
Mr Stringer—Thank you, Mr Chairman. I am a farmer from Rocky Glen near Coonabarabran. I am a member of the Citizens Electoral Council and have been for many years. I have been a candidate for the Parkes electorate. In this time I have got a clearer understanding of what is needed to make a society and a community not only function but prosper. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan itself is flawed because the act that it was spawned from, the 2007 Water Act, is also immoral and flawed because it came from the Ramsar agreement, the Ramsar agreement came from the founders of this process, and that was the World Wildlife Fund. The founding members of that fund were Prince Philip, the Queen’s consort, the Queen’s cousin, and Prince Bernhard. This was the founding of these environmental movements that have come up across the planet. Their agenda was the continuation of eugenics, and eugenics was the management and control of population. It is where Nazism was spawned. So you can see this whole thing is an agenda of shutting down Australia’s productivity, its ability to feed itself and numerous millions of others across the world. To shut this basin down, reduce its capacity to produce food, is nothing else other than genocide. You may not see the person you are not feeding, but they are on the other side of the planet. The capability of this nation to produce food and to support a much larger population is there, and it will take a strong willed government to actually make this happen. Unfortunately today we have too many people that are more interested in self-interest and are complying with intense, I must admit, pressure from overseas interests. These overseas interests come out of the banking and money power of the world, mainly London and Wall Street. Their agenda is to control the cartels in the food chain and also resources. Reducing food production only makes them stronger; it only makes them more powerful because there is less food in the system and the price can be forced up very rapidly. We are seeing that happen right now. Right now you are seeing across the world inflation running with food because food is becoming short. It is vital that the Murray-Darling Basin be preserved and developed, and to do this development we need further technology on water usage. We desperately need some of the eastern fall water up and down the New South Wales coast—and the Clarence is but one of these rivers; you have the rivers heading down towards Macleay. That water could come across to the Namoi, no problem. It is all going to waste. How many floods have we had in Grafton in 2009? How many floods in 2010? They are all in Grafton, and all the water goes to the sea, wasted. I hope these areas can be addressed and that the committee can see its way clear to being morally responsible in looking at them.
