Disagree! As revegitated areas, these areas could earn more as national parks and tourist venues than they ever did as leasehold pastoral grazing that needed something like forty or fifty acres per cow.

Cows/cattle with hooves that chopped up fragile waterway crossings and thereby, contributed bigtime to endless erossian. And as overgrazed leaseholds, west of the great divide, contibuted to invasion by feral weeds and vermin.

(A) tunnel project(s) would allow all Sydney's effluent to be piped westward, as well as cut down travel time via rail to outback NSW. which could, using the aforementioned water, turn large areas of arid wasteland into extremely productive gardens that support intensive crop/food production and jobs, jobs, jobs!

Or large wetlands that become natural firebreaks and timber plantations, native bird and animal sancturies that then support a vastly expanded tourist trade and help address climate change via revegitation. Yes, it would be a mammoth hurculean nation building project, that kees on giving for centuries and never ever becomes less expensive via endless delays and the usual, our own worst enemy, talk feast.

We need to end the usual, half assed projects and useless land lockups in favour of something far better that could be done off budget, while capital is as cheap as it is!
Alan B.

Neglected, vermin-ridden fire traps rarely, if ever, enjoyed by the public, replacing productive land.

Positive and cheerful as always ttbn.

ateday

Your disapproval of what other people say doesn't make what they say negative. It just means that you don’t like what they say. If you were at all a positive person yourself you would say what you think, but you never do that. You just hand out cheap, negative one-liners. You are a pathetic little grinch with no opinions of your own.

National parks are a disaster, & increasing the area simply reduces any even small management.

A mate had a property near the Jenolan caves, with a national park on one boundary. You couldn't have a worse neighbor. Not only was it a breeding ground for feral pests, both flora & forna, but they cost him a fortune in fines by the Pastoral Protection Board. He spent a lot of money in rabbit control only to have the national park flood his place with their out of control rabbits.

Typical green stupidity.

The Qld buy-ups of stations is a glaring example of a lot of tax Dollars achieving a situation of effort & money being spent for the sake of spending !