ABC's Landline report ...

Excerpt from the Landline report:

Claims water restrictions cutting jobs

11 June 2006

SALLY SARA: Toowoomba is the second biggest inland city in Australia after Canberra. It proudly calls itself the Garden City. The trouble is, Toowoomba is running out of water. Now the residents are getting ready for a referendum on whether to recycle sewage into drinking water.

DIANNE THORLEY: Well, it has never been done for Federal Government funding since Federation, for any local government, and we cannot find where any water project in the whole of the world has had to go to a poll. So it's quite interesting that we've been put into this position.

SALLY SARA: Toowoomba's mayor is pushing the recycling plan. She says the city doesn't have any choice because there is simply not enough water to go around.

DIANNE THORLEY: I believe it's going to get worse, and I look at some of the smaller places. I mean, if we end up using all our surface water, we go and ruin what's underneath, where are our great-grandkids going to be? Are they ever going to see rural Australia as I saw it?

SALLY SARA: Rosemary Morley is a local business operator leading the campaign against the recycling proposal. She says the plan would damage Toowoomba's reputation and make it hard for companies to do business.

ROSEMARY MORLEY: Absolutely. We are the lab rats for Australia, I call us. And it's a political push. While Beattie is determined to put dams for the Brisbane area, he is also determined to support the mayor in her project to bring this crazy scheme to this city.

SALLY SARA: Water has become the number one political issue in Toowoomba. It seems dry times are creating deep divisions.

ROSEMARY MORLEY: I'm very strong. I'd have to be, because I have people on the other side calling us flat earthers and all sorts of terrible names, but I believe we have researched this subject and we absolutely know, because there are no guidelines in Australia for us to go down this road, that Toowoomba doesn't need to do it.

Read the full transcript - Landline - claims water restrictions cutting jobs.


Arguably, the Mayor's comment that Toowoomba doesn't have any other choice is a false and misleading statement ...