Freehold land rights never did include the mineral wealth! Were not freehold as in fee absolute, but rather as in fee simple, ours, were really perpetual prepaid leases.

As for wasting our mineral resources. nothing that remains in the ground is wasted, but if known, becomes part of our mineral wealth.

We don't need much in the way of hydrocarbons in our future. A future that needs must, will include and rely heavily on new-age, safe, clean, cheap, nuclear power as (3 cents PKWH) MSR thorium. With that at our disposal, able to convert endlessly abundant seawater into hydrocarbons plastics/fertilizer. Only cheap nuclear power makes that self-sufficient outcome possible.

But for conflicted prevaricating politicians would have had the same already! Also on the shopping/development list is deionisation dialysis desalination/abundant, on-demand, cost-effective, broad-scale agriculture supported/made possible, by same, indefinitely!

Why? Because it's four times cheaper than reverse osmosis desalination, delivers four times as much volume for the same energy input and delivers 95% potable deionised water, with more than just the salt ions removed!

And power as cheap as 3 cents PKWH, makes it possible to pump it anywhere, cost-effectively. Whether it does/doesn't rain! Or dams are emptied via massive evaporation outcomes! Or just never ever filled as rainfall numbers drop through the floor!

Even should we want to revegetate the Sahara or any part of our arid inland! That's the real potential/game-changer in a world where the next boom will be a food boom!

Time to stop the endless idiotic ideological outcomes, given what they alone have delivered, i.e., SFA! Or a nation/economy going further and further backward, eternally!

Or if you will, farms going backward/farmers ruined or made bankrupt by the dozen by the week! With no end in sight!

What will it take to allow fundamental common sense to prevail!?

Which would allow a graphene highway to replace eyesore transmission towers and with that, allow electric vehicles to be recharged via magnetic induction on the go! Even as a nonstop Australian caravan/motoring holiday!
Alan B.

Graphene, man-made or natural is also a game-changer and given it's the strongest material on the planet, (200 times stronger than steel) would lead to enduring almost indestructible highways and byways, bridges and buildings that just don't crack because of corner and cost-cutting criminals leaving out/removing steel from foundations!?

And given it's also a superconductor able to create an electric vehicle recharge mechanism as long as the highway or byway, tram or rail tracks it's laid under. Even in GPS tram track agriculture.

we need to stop rolling out short term fix infrastructure that's obsolete before it's fully rolled out, but build for a future.

And means rapid rail ought to be VLT! And if that competes very effectively with our domestic airlines? Well, they can reroute some of their flight further inland or where the rapid rail has yet to extend into!

Trains that exclude fiction and are powered by solid-state systems will just coast to a stop with any failure. whereas high speed rail, (conventional) only as reliable as the wheel bearings that can and do fail dramatically and unexpectedly!

We need to end diabolically dumb, short term fixes and just do it once and do it right, and substantially cheaper in the long run!

Life without hydrocarbons emission will be extremely exciting productive and wealth-creating n a hitherto unknown scale if we can just get the naysayers and the moribund roadblocks out of the way! And if the cap fits mate?
Alan B.

We're surrounded by inexhaustible seawater! And a dual-lane inland shipping canal supported by tidal operated lock gates would allow a below sea level centre, to become a permanently full and flushed twice daily, endless water resource. Able to be converted to cost-effective endless freshwater via the above solution. Only timidity by politicians prevents its creation. !

And the one-way tidal flow managed by tidal operated automatic lock gates would allow shipping to save fuel and just go with the flow!

Shipping is the cheapest means of transporting bulk freight and passengers trains come next and are historically the safest by far transport if they are routinely upgraded and properly maintained And VLT would more than compete with a very profitable 3rd busiest eastern seaboard air traffic? Which would be all but forced to tout for other inland and western business! All good for rural and regional Australia!

Forbidden by our political puppets and Congress, to protect the profit curve of the fossil fuel industry, big nuclear and big pharma?

All of who face huge losses or annihilation if MSR thorium becomes as in Oak Ridge, operational! Nations currently spending on thorium R+D include Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Czechoslovakia, India, China, Russia and Canada.

And because it's the most energy-dense material on the planet, and as abundant as lead!

Moreover, MSR can be tasked to burn up all our current stockpile of nuclear waste, plus weapons-grade plutonium, to liberate the remaining 98+ energy component still available in it!

And should we choose to become the world's safe repository for nuclear waste? Able to earn annual billions for storing something we could use for literally thousands of years. And when fully depleted, the half-life reduced to just 300 years! And an energy bill so low as to be all but free!

A win-win all round for those able to use the brains they were born with and a desire to find and follow the factual truth, not the mountains of BS put about by the ignorant as, the disingenuous, mendacious, couldn't lie straight in bed, fear-mongering anti-nuclear/anti- development brigade!
Alan B.

100% wind and solar is possible for a country the size of Australia
but the catch, and isn't there always a catch ?
We can't afford it !
By the time you multiply the turbines and panels and build the high
capacity grid to support it while it goes rushing around the country
chasing the wind, well we would run out of money before it was finished.

Does anyone get notifications of new posts anymore ?
I haven't had one for about a year.

we would run out of money before it was finished.
Bazz,
Imagine the pollution from the production & maintenance of such equipment.

Who runs this country?

After three years of an agonising gay rights campaign, which totally fixated our parliament, and redirected its thinking down equally negative rabbit holes, the Chinese walked in and took it over.
Best of British for the future. Your correct Vivian, we haven't utilised our God given natural resources, but sure as God made little green apples, the Chinese did.

Dan