SA: Water upgrade opportunities missed: Turnbull

AAP General News (Australia)
08-22-2009
SA: Water upgrade opportunities missed: Turnbull

MELBOURNE, Aug 22 AAP - Opportunities to improve water efficiency are being thrown
away by the federal government, opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull says.

Addressing members of the party faithful at a state council meeting in Adelaide on
Saturday, the former coalition environment minister said the state founded by free settlers
had embodied the spirit of enterprise "that had made Australia great".

Mr Turnbull attacked the federal government's strategy of growing debt levels as a
misguided socialist experiment.

He stressed the nation would feel the consequences of virtually no investment in irrigation
infrastructure once the prolonged drought was over.

"The consequence of this neglect will be, that there will be no more water in the system
and we will have a dramatically reduced capacity to produce food and fibre," he said.

"We will have farmers using the same wasteful techniques, and irrigation corporations
and cooperatives using the same wasteful techniques of distributing water as they did
beforehand..."

He pledged to complete the Liberals' vision in 2007 of ensuring the Murray River has
the environmental flows it needs.

Mr Turnbull said under Liberal rule South Australia would not be treated with contempt
by the upstream states.

"We need a Murray-Darling Basin that is managed in the national interest."

AAP ees/jnb

KEYWORD: WATER TURNBULL

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