Darling River fish kill: cotton industry says it won't be 'the whipping boy' for disaster

NSW Labor calls for special commission of inquiry into the environmental disaster

The cotton industry says it is not to blame for the mass deaths of hundreds of thousands of fish in the Darling River and is tired of being a "whipping boy" for problems associated with the drought.

Communities in the Menindee Lakes region, where two fish kills have occurred since December, have said over-extraction by irrigators helped cause the catastrophe that has put a spotlight on the environmental management of Australia's largest river system.