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The Forum > Article Comments > Abbott's Northern Australian idea: grand vision or folly? > Comments

Abbott's Northern Australian idea: grand vision or folly? : Comments

By Murray Hunter, published 28/6/2013

A report prepared for the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce clearly states that there is little factual evidence and infrastructure to support the feasibility of developing the North as a 'food bowl'.

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Exactly what sustainability means depends on what you are trying to preserve. If it is agricultural land, you want to keep the land producing in the same way indefinitely, so you follow good farming practices: you don't let the topsoil blow away, don't poison the land with salt, etc. This is hardly controversial. If there is no way that you can farm without creating a wasteland in a few years, it is better not to start. The Okies didn't just bankrupt themselves, they damaged good grazing land.

This report (from a private company in the agricultural sector, not an environmental organization) summarises the research findings to date.

http://www.agrow.com.au/assets/pdf/Australia's%20Top%20End%20Food%20Bowl%20Debate.pdf

Irrigation and dams very much were considered. In all the writing about this that I have seen, the main problems for the 'food bowl for Asia' idea include poor soil, the long dry season with ferocious rates of evaporation, and a lack of suitable dam sites.

While I wouldn't want to denigrate practical knowledge or claim that scientists always get it right, agricultural science has been the great success story of the 20th century. Norman Borlaug and the other scientists behind the Green Revolution doubled or tripled grain productivity, averting (or at least putting off) the famines Paul Ehrlich (and a lot of other people) had predicted for the 1970s and saving the lives of perhaps a billion people. Are you sure that you want to sneer at such scientists, Hasbeen? Here in Australia, the scientists were right about the cane toad, and the cane farmers pushing for its introduction were wrong.

As for the 'million Chinese', people in what is now Indonesia have been growing rice for thousands of years and knew about Australia long before Captain Cook. If Northern Australia was great for their sort of agriculture, then why didn't they settle it? Or why didn't their aboriginal trading partners learn agriculture from them? Both these sorts of things happened in Europe after agriculture was developed in the Near East.

(cont'd)
Posted by Divergence, Saturday, 29 June 2013 4:09:07 PM
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(cont'd)

Like Ludwig, I am not automatically opposed to any development, but judging by the expert opinion so far, this initiative is likely to turn into a giant boondoggle that all of us taxpayers will have to subsidise. If developing a giant food bowl is such a great idea, then why hasn't the private sector invested in it, or even set up pilot projects? The FAO World Food Price Index has been extremely high by historical standards since 2008.

The other issue is that the politicians will use this scheme at an excuse for additional mass migration, with the migrants eventually ending up in places like Sydney and Melbourne, where they will compete with the existing residents for jobs, housing, public services, and amenities. Our brilliant leaders in the major parties have seen to it that we are now acquiring five new people for every new full-time job. Three quarters of those new jobs are going to people born overseas (457 visas, anyone?), even though they are only 31% of the population. See this article by Tim Colebatch, the Economics Editor of the Melbourne Age

http://www.theage.com.au/national/skilled-newcomers-flood-fulltime-jobs-market-20130614-2o9vm.html#ixzz2WGauEboK

We will get to subsidise the unemployed people as well and put up with the indirect social costs.
Posted by Divergence, Saturday, 29 June 2013 4:25:52 PM
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A very interesting project and well worth studying.
If it comes off it would be beneficial for the country way into the future.
However it will need a very large input in energy to build the support
infrastructure. If we continue our export rate of coal and natural gas
then I doubt we could do the job.
Once the area had significant development under way large energy input
would be needed to build and extend the railways and local roads.
The major fuel requirements will be electricity and gas. Diesel will
only be available in comparatively small quantities and at a high cost.
Gas will be need to produce fertiliser.

The inherent land quality map to which we were referred shows how
small an area would be available and mostly close to the coast.
So we are talking not about all of Queensland & the NT but areas
smaller than NSW.

My thoughts together with the thoughts of others shows that it might
well be a much smaller project than many expected.
Posted by Bazz, Saturday, 29 June 2013 4:35:07 PM
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Ludwig, Divergence, Bazz. Very interesting and studied comments, including Rhrosty and Grumblers sceptical comment on government 'picking winners'. This is a conversation essential to the development of the proposed 'white' paper, a conversation and a time frame essential to the development of good policy. Examples of 'special economic zones' developed in various places throughout the world example both successes and failures.

It is good to see, finally, the potential development of policy that is not the result of a 'thought bubble' to catch the 24 hour news cycle or the 'back of a beer coaster' economics of policy development. Who knows, with a competent government with demonstrated economic management history, we may even see a cost benefited analysis included in the process.

I have hopefull expectations of a potential 'snowy river' nation changeing proposal here.

Hopefully we can bypass the 'junk science' input of the the likes of WWF and Greenpeace etc etc.

It is the likes of these NGO's that rubbish the concept of 'sustainability' as used by Ludwig etc.
Posted by Prompete, Saturday, 29 June 2013 6:32:13 PM
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Learned Friends. Define sustainabiity!
My definition , for what it's worth, is " I've got mine, stuff you Jack".
This blinkered vision will ensure urbanities decide the fate of what fellow investors sow. This will then be exposed to the whims of a Four Corners expose!
Posted by carnivore, Saturday, 29 June 2013 8:18:42 PM
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Carnivore, the answer to your question is simple.

Sustainability is what occurs in a zero growth economy.

Many people give more complicated explanations but when you crunch all
of them to the fundamental the energy requirement forces the economy
into zero growth.
Posted by Bazz, Saturday, 29 June 2013 10:29:38 PM
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