Press Release

Recfish Australia, the peak national organisation representing Australia's 5.5 million recreational and sport fishers and their $3.0 billion a year industry, today announced its endorsement of the joint Australian Conservation Foundation/National Farmers Federation 10-year Plan to repair the national landscape.

In endorsing the $65 billion five-point ACF/NFF Plan, Recfish Australia also announced it had recommended to the Federal Government prompt establishment of a national and independent Murray-Darling-Snowy Basin Rehabilitation Authority.

As proposed by a Recfish Australia member body, Native Fish Australia (NFA) (see attached News Release), the Authority would not be just another government bureaucracy.

It would be a permanent national project, independent and with the expertise and powers to coordinate and build on the wealth of required skills, knowledge and research ability already resident in Australian institutions such as the CSIRO, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, universities, private corporations, research institutes and centres of excellence and the like.

The Authority's job would be to rehabilitate, manage and enhance in perpetuity the natural resources and environmental sustainability of the basins of the Murray, Darling and Snowy Rivers.

Recfish Australia Vice-president, Graham Pike, and NFA National President, Craig Ingram, said the ACF/NFF Plan was sound but would need leadership and coordination of the type history has shown that governments simply cannot provide from within their bureaucracies.

"We need a Rehabilitation Authority with the sort of operational, political and decision-making independence and powers - and community support - that the Snowy Mountains Authority had", they said today. (Craig Ingram is also the Independent MLA for Gippsland East and holds the balance of power in the Victorian Parliament.)

The proposal for a Rehabilitation Authority has been formally put to the Task Force of Federal Cabinet Ministers currently reviewing the structure and role of the Commonwealth-State Murray-Darling Basin Commission.

"The forward-looking alliance of ACF/NFF is itself evidence of the seriousness of the immensity of the disaster all Australians are facing." The ACF/NFF plan calls for an annual $6.5 billion investment by governments and the private sector over 10 years - a total of $65 billion - to repair and protect the Australia's seriously damaged land and water environments nationally.

Contact: Graham Pike, Vice-president, Recfish Australia - 0412 960 032