Develop northern Australia?

There has ALWAYS been the desire amongst the starry-eyed expansionists to develop the north. And they have always had the political and financial backing to go for it if they could show that it was feasible and viable…because our poliies have always sat firmly within the starry-eyed expansionist camp!

But if it was easy or even quite difficult but feasible, it would have been done by now!

It is not developable country! At least not without some very strong and highly artificial incentives, for which the Australia taxpayer would foot an enormous bill… with not much to show for it.

As you say Murray;

< …there is a danger that the whole concept will come down to a government web of tax breaks and subsidies, without anything really being developed. >

Absolutely.

Abbott said: "We are determined to break the ongoing deadlock that has held Northern Australia back so long"

Well, I say to him that his thinking is all wrong!!

What he should be thinking about, but which is evidently completely not within his brainspace, is how to develop a sustainable Australian society!

Striving to open up the north and turn it into some vast food bowl, is NOT what we need to achieve a sustainable future.

Is Abbott's Northern Australian idea a grand vision or folly?

Definitely folly.

Small minded nonsense. People like you should get out of the way and let those with some imagination and gumption get on with it. You're a taker, not a contributor.

So DavidL, is it small-minded nonsense to desire a sustainable future?

It is nonsense to desire the demand for all our basic resources and the supply capability to be in balance, instead of both the supply and demand getting forever bigger, and with the environmental and quality-of-life impacts getting ever bigger along with it?

Come on David, give us your vision of our future. Lets’ see how ‘big’ your mind really is.

BTW, I am not against all development in the north. Some development would be fine, for as long as it is economically feasible in the long term, and most importantly for as long as it is part of a policy of achieving sustainability, rather than part of the same old facilitation of population growth and hence of increasing demand along with supply (of food and export income)…. which really would be nonsensical, and would do nothing to help us achieve the essential sustainability paradigm.

DavidL should consider that misconceived agricultural projects have done enormous harm to people and to the environment. SBS recently ran a four part series on the Dust Bowl in the US in the 1930s, America's biggest environmental disaster. People were fooled by the lies of the boosters and by a series of unusually wet years into growing wheat on land on the Great Plains that should only have been used for grazing.

The farmers had a few good years, and then the rains failed in the 1930s. They lost crop after crop and then went bankrupt. Some went to California to work as farm labourers (the so-called Okies). The constant winds picked up the bare topsoil and blew up enormous dust storms, and there were many deaths from dust pneumonia. The elderly people who had lived through it as children and were interviewed for the series were still traumatised and still grieved for the brothers and sisters who had died of the dust pneumonia. The dust storms reached as far as cities on the Atlantic such as Boston. Maybe those people needed a bit of small-minded thinking before they got into such a mess.

You might also read up on how the Soviet government destroyed the Aral Sea.

The Northern Land and Water Taskforce did find some opportunities for agricultural development, but nothing like the 'food bowl for Asia' spruiking. Future Tense on Radio National interviewed a number of agricultural scientists in Northern Australia after the Taskforce report came out, and they agreed with it. Perhaps the rest of us should listen.

Other reports say other things, or the complete opposite!
We've always had experts who always knew all the reasons something couldn't or wouldn't be done!
If we had bothered listening to many of them, we'd still be living in caves; and running our food down with a stone tied onto a stick!
All that is really missing is the infrastructure; and all that is required to produce that in quite massive nation building improvements; is an entirely reformed and completely unavoidable tax system.
That then claws back an estimated 100 billion plus per, that is currently being withheld, courtesy of avoidance or the vagaries of the global economy.
Vagaries we need to adjust for, or end!
Rhrosty.

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" (Niels Bohr)

The idea that we need government committee to develop a grand vision and pass this through a white paper is a sure recipe for failure. After living in the north for many years I am of the opinion that it has huge potential, but the current government (generally not just the party of the day) of it restricts and distorts its growth into the wrong areas. Essentially you need to foster an environment where new businesses can evolve to the conditions not have governments decide who is in charge of the bread supply of Moscow, sorry Darwin.

Imagine for a second the growth that would occur if you set tax rates (corporate, individual and other) north of the Tropic of Capricorn to a quarter of the "southern" rate, “simplified’ the import/export process for goods from this region and released enough land that a house block cost less than the median yearly wage (there is no shortage of land in the north). Not all of the initial growth would last, but the evolutionary process would ensure that the ones most suited would take root. And who knows, the Leffler curve may even mean that it’s actually revenue positive for Canberra.