Independent South Australian senator Nick Xenophon has launched a blistering attack on Victorian Premier John Brumby, likening his call for responsible water use to Osama bin Laden demanding world peace.
Senator Xenophon made the remark in an address to several hundred protesters gathered in Adelaide's Victoria Square for a rally to save the Murray River.
Mr Brumby said on Friday the South Australian Government's $67million plan to help desperate irrigators buy water was inappropriate and would drive up water prices for other irrigators.
''When John Brumby tries to lecture us about responsible water policy, it's a bit like Osama bin Laden calling for world peace,'' Senator Xenophon said.
He said Mr Brumby had delayed the Council of Australian Governments' Murray-Darling agreement and was behind Victoria's proposed north-south pipeline that would suck 75 gigalitres annually from the Murray-Darling Basin.
''The eastern states don't understand how dire the situation is in South Australia,'' Senator Xenophon said.
''This is not about state against state... because we all want the same thing.
''We want one river system with one set of rules.''
Senator Xenophon is calling for a fast-tracked national takeover of the river system, the urgent purchase of 60GL of water to keep the river's lower lakes alive, and urgent works to save the Coorong wetlands.
He said that 25 years ago the Hawke Labor government ''used every bit of legal arsenal they could'' to save Tasmania's Franklin River.
''If the Rudd Government is serious about saving the Murray-Darling system, they can do it,'' he said, urging a similar commitment from the current Government.
SA Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young told the rally that if a national plan to save the river was not immediately implemented, communities along its route would be crippled and disappear.
''I'm sick and tired of being told we need to just sit back and pray for rain,'' she said.
''It's not a solution.''
She is urging the Federal Government to buy the 60GL of water the state Government says is required between now and mid-2009 tosave the Lower Lakes and Coorong regions.
Associate Professor David Paton, of the University of Adelaide, told the rally that, in the 1930s, 80per cent of the water that went into the river system flowed out through the mouth, but by the 1990s the outflow was down to 25per cent and now was down to virtually nothing.
He said the World Heritage-listed Coorong was suffering as a result, with some fauna disappearing and six years of drought in the wetlands likely to continue for at least another two or three years.
He called for urgent action to pump the saltwater out of the Coorong to keep the system alive until the river system was rehydrated.
''I'm tired of politics driving this,'' Dr Paton said.
''Politicians do not have the skills to drive environmental outcomes.'' AAP
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