Mintabie Out of Water

ACTING Water Minister Jennifer Rankine says the Outback mining town of Mintabie is responsible for securing its own uncontaminated water.

 Why? It says in the article that Mintabie won't qualify for water funding because it is on APY lands.The people of Mintabie lease the lands.  I am in South Australia and  people here should have sufficient potable water. South Australia 2011. I should imagine there is a duty of care here by the government to ensure people in this state have adequate supplies of clean , fresh water. I cannot believe I am actually writing this. I can't believe there are people up there who cannot wash properly, who don't have proper drinking water and who are not being allowed to have proper water supplies and this after an investigtion 5 years ago stating clearly that the situation was urgent. They are trucking water to people in the isolated towns in Queensland because of flood contaminated water. We need to give these people in South Australia proper water and then talk about solving the long term water supply issues. They need water NOW. This is just awful.

According to Wikipedia:

For decades two major issues throughout the APY Lands have been the low standard of health care (comparative with the rest of Australia) and drug abuse, namely alcohol, petrol sniffing, then cannabis and now other illicit drugs. Part of the difficulty in reducing alcohol and illicit drug use has been the straddling of the indigenous areas of three jurisdictions: South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The jurisdictional crossover has made police enforcement of drug trafficking laws difficult. Recent collaboration has started to deliver results.^[6]

 I found that out because I googled APY lands.What is written may be true, partially true or not quite true but in anycase if there is a police problem that needs to be settled separately from the water problem.  None of us would be supporting the demise of our indigenous people but no one stands accused in Mintabie as far as has been reported .Lack of water is hardly going to improve health. So why can't they have water? They need water. WATER. There is a duty of care here.