A TOP US radio commentator claims Australian authorities are in secret talks to evacuate 11 million citizens due to drought. If he's right, will the last Australian to leave the country please turn off the tap?Well, it's all a bit of a joke - and the big laugh is on US talkback host Art Bell, one of the biggest names in American radio. Bell, who is on more radio stations than any other US broadcaster, repeated claims that Australian authorities are in emergency talks with the United States and other Commonwealth allies for the "proposed evacuation of 11 million" citizens, because of the crippling drought.
The weekend host for the Coast to Coast radio show claimed Australians would be forced to travel to other parts of the world on a flotilla of cruise ships carrying up to 500,000 people at a time because of the dwindling water supply.
And while there has been some talk of evacuating a handful of isolated country towns struggling to maintain their water supply, Bell repeated the claims of a supposed Russian scientist – who said Australia had sought the help of other western nations to consider moving its citizens to the vast wilderness regions of Alaska and Canada.
He paraphrased claims by supposed Russian scientist Sorcha Faal that secret talks were already under way to evacuate half the country, following Prime Minister John Howard's grim warning that the nation's food bowl region of the Murray Darling was under direct threat. "I wonder when the climate sceptics are going to finally catch on," Bell said. "Will it take something like this? Like evactuating half a nation, before we wake up and realise that it is actually happening?"