Nation builders: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot - and as we progress down this list, the more they even managed
to empty out their crowded cities.

As the saying went in Soviet Russia: "Stalin is our father, Russia is our mother - may we all be orphans!"

This is an advertisement for book. There is absolutely no need to develop uninabitable areas of Australia. We couldn't afford to, anyway. We do not need to 'feed the world' either.

@Yuyutsu that was worthy of a Runner post, how odd.

@Everald it's a great vision, its a pity we don't have a political party in Australia standing up for regional and country Australia.
Once the Nationals get their Fracking money, then their off to the Sydney town house.

Areas of australia can be made habitable, easily, just make water available.

What happened to the food producing nation of Australia?

Riding on the sheep's back is finished due to development of synthetic fibre.
Now even the USA de facto motor car manufacturing industry is leaving.

Australia now imports 70 percent of it's fish product while the the last of the professional and AMATEUR FISHING TOURISM industries are on their knees.
Who has evidence algae is not destroying seagrass food web nurseries? Who has what evidence sewage nutrient pollution feeding algae is not taking available oxygen from coral causing anoxia and collapse of the Great Barrier Reef international tourism drawcard? That collapse is an absolute disgrace.

Even some people on this site arrogantly ignore unrefuted opportunities actually put forward.
Example is the water harvesting and aqueduct system I have suggested in the Supporting Information to the Green Paper of the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper.
That project is not for me. I live on a pension LOL.
It is a project needed for numerous obvious reasons as indicated therein.
The ABC should be shut down for filling airwaves with junk while good opportunities are blatantly not investigated and reported.
It's fair enough broadcasting fun fun fun if business and employment and national wealth and export opportunities were investigated also.

No wonder Australia is going backwards and will continue to until those jealous and apathetic people modify their attitude and open their eyes.
Including to read somebody book.

Yuyutsu, of those four only Stalin engaged in significant nation building.

Why do you even associate nation building with despicable tyrants? Pol Pot built nothing useful. Hitler built a few autobahns but that was it. And Mao's efforts were pathetic compared to what China is now doing. I suggest that instead of looking at past villains you should look to present day China.

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Cobber,
"its a pity we don't have a political party in Australia standing up for regional and country Australia."

What about the Bobcats?

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JF Aus,

Making the water available is the easy bit; attracting people to settle in northern Australia is a lot harder.

"Who has what evidence sewage nutrient pollution feeding algae is not taking available oxygen from coral causing anoxia and collapse of the Great Barrier Reef international tourism drawcard?"
Indirectly it is one of the many threats to the GBR, though it's not the algae themselves that cause the problem but bacteria feeding on algal products. And the source of the nutrients is more likely to be agricultural runoff than sewage.

"The ABC should be shut down for filling airwaves with junk while good opportunities are blatantly not investigated and reported."
They are investigated and reported. I suggest you watch Landline.

I forget how many times I have advocated an inland canal as a two lane system that could then utilize massive northern tides (forty feet) and simple lock gates at the northern entrances to keep the water moving!

One opened exclusively at the top of the tide (for about an hour) the other opened at the bottom. This in effect would send a forty foot wall of water twice a day down through and around the system to flush and renew it.

I know something about dredging, ( A metre wide ten metres tall rotating bucket wheel) sand pumps and pipelines, which is far and away the lowest costing method of very large scale earthworks.

Fifty such dredges, working around the clock, except for maintainence shut downs; could divide the route up into 25 sections per lane to reduce the build time by the power of fifty. Making it doable inside a single decade?

Dredges easy enough to build, given all they are are a couple of floatation chambers with an engine and a couple of pumps mounted on the deck and moved by a rearward or forward facing water jets and three simple winches, connected to anchors. And the digging wheel powered by hydraulic fluid for simplicity and convenience.

Some rock drilling blasting, dozers and carryalls, (conventional earthworks) might be necessary at the first part of the route; but that is all, and not much of an engineering feat, given all we're talking about, is a low range of (soft limestone) hills.

A proposed route, should end at (fifteen feet below sea level) lake Eyre, a naturally central transport hub, and wouldn't be much of an engineering feat.

A couple of very large scale solar thermal power plants could power low cost irrigation suitable (recent dutch advances) desalination plants to utilise much of this new eternally reliable water source to open up an arid inland.

As for funds, we have around two trillion in our own super funds just looking for some government guaranteed thirty year self terminating and tax free (guaranteed returns) infrastructure bonds as safe harbours.
Rhrosty.