Hi guys, I received your email earlier and have been researching it a bit on the internet, it sounds to me like the MDBA do not want meetings at all, so please keep the pressure on them. I live right on the Murray and have grown up here, any more water taken away will have devastating effects. A lot of business are just surviving and this is in what should be boom times for us.

The government clearly doesn't care about any of the Australian people, whether they are urban or country dwellers.

I also have to wonder what a Carbon Tax will do to our superannuation holdings, especially after it has brought Australian industries to a halt, and the dole queue has become longer than the Mighty Murray.

On the television news, it was stated that 52,000 jobs have been lost in the manufacturing industries in the last year alone.

Today Alan Jones spoke at the National Press Club, on the topics of food security, coal mines and coal seam gas. His speech was a damning indictment on the Labor government, both at the Queensland and federal levels.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/alan-jones-calls-for-moratorium-on-coal-seam-gas-development-and-exploration/story-e6frg6nf-1226170789522

I own a house across from the Murrumbidgee River at Hay, when we purchased the house no body told us the Federal Government would launch a series of water buybacks and create a prolonged period of uncertainty which would lead to a major economic decline here at Hay including a fire sale of local real estate and subsequent decline in real estate values and Hay's population.

On numerous occasions I have contacted Minister Burke, Mr Knowles and even Prime Minister Gillard about visiting Hay and consulting with our community. They never came or indicated they would come.

Hay is a river community, if consultations are not taking place with the people in river communities who are the politicians and MDBA consulting with ? Lobbyists ? GetUp ? ACF ? Friends of the Earth ? People who do not live in the Basin ?

People here in Hay have houses and businesses that have devalued and may be unsaleable, we have kids at the schools with very little prospect of finding work locally when they complete it, elderly left here who have had their families leave town to find work elsewhere, people under extreme financial pressure. We need the Government and MDBA to visit here and see first hand how they are implementing the MDBA process is destroying the community and social fabric of the 150 year old Riverina community of Hay.

Please don't let our 150 year old town be destroyed in 3-4 years of poor Ministerial decisions by Ministers Burke and Wong + Prime Ministers Gillard and Rudd.

Here's what I think is happening.

Peter quite rightly asks who the government is consulting with. I'd say it is Chinese corporations, Wesfarmers and Woolworths, all of whom wish to clear the land of Australian farmers and graziers, so they can more thoroughly rip off the whole Australian community.

At the next election, the ALP is sure to become a minority group. In the mean time, farmers should hang in there and stubbornly refuse to leave their land, so scumbags cannot abuse us.

The whole society is now on the warpath, so hopefully there will soon be a rainbow in sight for rural Australia.