This is the story I heard.
"The American Parker brothers brought cotton growing to Aus in the early 1960's when they bought grazing land near Narrabri NSW. They had poisioned the land where they grew cotton in US to the point where it would grow nothing, so they came here and bought cheap grazing land and developed it into irrigated farming using as much water and chemicals as they wanted."
I saw their original property in the late 1990's and it will now not grow much now, even weeds.
This is my opinion.
To not buy any Australian cotton would be I believe a bad move in so far as all the people who are employed in growing the best quality and cleanest cotton in the world would be out on their ears. What would you buy instead? Nylon and similar synthetics made from oil? Wool? Other countries that produce cotton (eg China/Pakistan) will not do it as well and clean as we can. Cotton is a 'dirty' product because we want to buy a T shirt or undies for a couple of dollars. To get a cotton product to the market for that price requires the farmer to use lots of water. Dryland cotton yields about 10% of what irrigated does, so are you prepared to pay a higher price for those undies as if not then a farmer cannot produce a product for the same price with higher costs and will quickly go broke.
Our politicions have failed us because they have let too many investors (not the average farmer, as most large cotton properties are owned by banks/investment companies/overseas companies who don't give a stuff about the land or people so long as the profits roll in) open up more and more country to irrigated cotton (and other high return crops) for a 'backhander' under the table to get them re-elected, with the result that now when the country is in drought there is no water in rivers. When you see set-ups like this to pump water from rivers then you can get an understanding of how quickly they can move the water into the storage dams on farm.