In a world of decreasing energy such huge infrastructure dreams have no future. The funding does not exist for them. Olympic Dam will in all likelihood never go ahead as it is defeated by high oil prices and fuel insecurity. They propose years of overburden removal requiring massive imports of diesel fuel before they even get to the ore body! So much of this water proposal is moot.

The important issue as KAEP reminds us is the ecological impacts - both on Lake Eyre and where the water is taken from. Ever more screwing with Australia's ecology on a massive scale will not make our nation a better place.

Hehehehe!

Daff, you’re a funny man…er, duck.

As much as I love ducks, this is what I think of Mr Compton’s proposal:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=that's%20despicable&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCkQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dy3Z2MP8vMWU&ei=W_R4T-OWFcaZiQewmuzkBA&usg=AFQjCNG6_bJwqHxqbqTfcdqtdQt79Cf87w

Another important issue. I cannot understand an Australian Government that will not subsidise a program that will see 10 volunteers from EVERY school in the nation spending one week visiting, inspecting, living at and assiting revegetation programs at EVERY Major Australian mine. There is an urgency to bring average Austrlaians into touch with the realities of this land and how to love, best-serve and sustainably proper from it.

I reiterate: why can't we have miners with a real national conscience and NOT a crude & ruthless obligation to fatten overseas investors while wrapping that evil in the Australian flag and their Sunday-best Kloppbber?? And why can't we have politicians who aren't prone to thinking think the world and its privileges revolve only around THEM!

Every additional drop of water delivered to South Australian and/or the Murray Darling is likely to eventually end up keeping the artificial Lower Lakes full of freshwater as an efficient water storage for Adelaide and/or delivered to the Southern Ocean.

There is a place for more infrastructure development in Queensland and the water should be used in Queensland.

This sort of constructive proposal is worth evaluating with a detailed engineering and feasibility study. It is interesting that most of the commenters here can dismiss Everald's plan based on superficial, largely green, opinions.

HS,

There is NOTHING superficial in understanding Australia's interior from a second law of Thermodynamics standpoint. If there are "interesting" weak links, they are the profit-first engineering and feasibility studies that overlook siltation, evaporation and cost overruns to come up with quick-grab mineral solutions to fatten overseas investors at the expense of Australian citizens.

Australians' KNOW what's goin' on and if miners aren't prepared to jump through more hoops to mine here they can go to Africa and get shot in their mines or to Canada and freeze their butts off.

Wake up!

We have.