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.

Well it is an advertisement for a book, but I won't hold that against him.
I agree with the authors opinion that we're a 'disgracefully underdeveloped and poorly planned nation'.

Looking back upon my school years at some of the pointless reading I did, I can only conclude that a inspirational book like this should've been part of the education curriculum.
Maybe even an entire subject should've been devoted to nation building.

Think of where our country might be today if we had've tried just a little bit harder to inspire and compel kids to do truly grand things.

I commend his efforts, this type of thinking is sadly missing in our country and I wish he'd written it 40 or 50 years ago.

Dear Aidan,

<<Why do you even associate nation building with despicable tyrants?>>

It's only a matter of degree. Obviously what is being done in Australia is nowhere on that scale, but still any attempt to regiment innocent people and line them up as a "nation" is despicable.

<<I suggest that instead of looking at past villains you should look to present day China>>

That still holds the Tibetan people captives.
That still arrests and tortures dissidents.
That still backs up North Korea.
That still tries to expand by military force.
That still forces draconic laws over its citizens.

The more "nation" you have, the more you have those things. Do not build me a nation, do not build me a cage - even if it's golden.

I agree this article is a shameless plug for the author's book.

While the nation building efforts of Flynn were laudable, he drew largely on the voluntarily-provided resources of the communities he worked with. Nowadays, "nation building" is more often code for taking large amounts taxpayers' money and spending it on useless mega infrastructure projects in the hope that "build it and they will come".

Rhosty's proposed canal is a case in point. An independent study several years ago looked at options to bring water from the Kimberley to Perth. It concluded that a canal was the most costly option, high risk and technically very difficult. it would deliver water at about 20 times the cost of desalination. This didn't stop people from decrying the lack of "vision" when governments refused to build one, though.

http://www.water.wa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/4966/64772.pdf

The clear fact that Australia no longer has the money to perform the 'water fantasies' is always overlooked by people who cannot come to terms with reality. The fantasists are still expecting a turnaround in our fortunes that is just not going to happen. The good times are over for good, not just in Australia, but the West in general. Those good times were a one-off aberration, and our last big water project was the Snowy Mountain Scheme, which will remain a fond, but unrepeatable, memory.

@ Aidan, Wednesday, 27 April 2016 11:12:33 AM

Aidan,
If you look into my submission at index "F" (Fairfax) in the White Paper you will see the suggestion is to send water south into the Murray Darling catchment which starts inland west of Fraser island, Queensland.

I think many new towns would spring up along the way to cater for new farming, while water would assist existing farms and towns.

Sewage nutrient overload pollution is not a "threat" to the GBR because sewage and land use nutrient overload is already the fundamental cause already killing coral, leading to 'bleaching'.

Coral is exposed to very warm water at low tide during summer but bleaching does not occur where that warm water is.
The killer is the algae.

The source of nutrient overload is from all sources including government dumped sewage occurring daily.
Agricultural runoff only occurs in association with rain on this very dry country.
And presently there is a drought in Queensland, yet the worst bleaching.

I think Landline is a good program. But have they reported why farmers are being blamed for GBR nutrient pollution while nutrient dumped daily from sewage outfalls is not measured and included in the total loading that is resulting in algae blooms and damage?

There is need for whole of water ecosystem management because there are critically serious consequences to whole world ocean fish AND marine ecosystem DEVASTATION.
i.e. Farmers are supposed to use affordable guano from seabirds but most seabirds have vanished due to starvation.

Our media stops news of ocean problems being aired.

The ABC is not investigating and reporting that impact of unprecedented sewage and land use nutrient pollution proliferated ocean and lake algae has not been measured and assessed in AGW, IPCC, Kyoto and Turnbull associated climate science.

Algae is important like a rainforest.

Previously thought impossible they say. LOL, 2012.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/june/arctic-algal-blooms-060712.html

What about warmth properties of algae plant matter that I am unable to find evidence to contradict.
Also thought impossible.
Yet the subject and relevant solutions could help build this nation.

Prove otherwise if anyone can

The following link provides insight to what Australia must look into, and not copy.
In Australia the Great Barrier Reef international tourism drawcard is DOWNSTREAM, like the Great Lakes are downstream.

See the recent date on the following news (not on the Aus ABC - or is it?).
And I suggest don't blame farmers because there is need to take all city and town sewage nutrient into account, the total nutrient loading, to prevent demolition of GBR life as we know it.

Why build the nation if the massive GBR international attraction for example, is allowed to be lost due to nutrient overload - not CO2?

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/04/23/dairy-farms-cow-manure-lakes/83444078/

JF Aus,

"Sewage nutrient overload pollution is not a "threat" to the GBR because sewage and land use nutrient overload is already the fundamental cause already killing coral, leading to 'bleaching'."
If that were true, it couldn't not be a threat!

But nutrient overload causes embrittlement, not bleaching. Bleaching is the result of the coral expelling the symbiotic algae due to the stress it causes when the water is too hot. That much is well known, and confirmed by experimentation. Just because coral can cope with extra heat for a few hours doesn't mean it can withstand it for weeks and months at a time!

It is far from the only threat. Others include sedimentation, crown of thorns starfish, ocean acidification and of course embrittlement.

"Agricultural runoff only occurs in association with rain on this very dry country."
And despite it being very dry for a lot of the time, there is significant rain.

"And presently there is a drought in Queensland, yet the worst bleaching."
Because bleaching is caused by heat.

"I think Landline is a good program. But have they reported why farmers are being blamed for GBR nutrient pollution while nutrient dumped daily from sewage outfalls is not measured and included in the total loading that is resulting in algae blooms and damage?"
Firstly, not being the only source of pollution does not absolve them of the responsibility for the pollution they cause.
Secondly, AIUI that's by far the biggest cause.
Thirdly, your use of the term "sewage outfalls" implies that the sewage is going into the sea untreated, which seems unlikely to me. Do you mean effluent outfalls?
Fourthly, what evidence do you have that nutrient levels in that are going unmonitored?

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ttbn,

Australia is financially sovereign. We can afford to build whatever we want. We can create our own good times.

Rhian,

I can't understand why there was any support for that "canal" proposal (though AIUI it was actually proposed to be an aqueduct). But pipelines south from the Kimberley to serve remote outback communities and mines still seem like a good idea.

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Yuyutsu, China had much more of those undesirable things when it had less "nation".

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Rhosty, are you aware that those tide figures are the maxima? Most of the time they're much less.

The effect of your plan on the groundwater would be devastating.

Aidan,

"Threat" is a word indicating something is going to happen, one split second away or years away. Relevant damage to the GBR has been and is already happening.

Nutrient pollution is feeding epiphyte growth shutting down photosynthesis in seagrass, it has already killed most seagrass nurseries that are supposed to be the primary supplier of small fish to feed fish and animals including baleen whales.

Nutrient pollution is also feeding invasive algae blooms that cover coral and exhaust available oxygen, suffocating the coral polyp and coral's own zooanthellae algae.
A dead zone occurs, some small some covering an entire reef.
Smothered dead polyp and zooanthellae falls away, expelled they say. Sunlight and salt water then bleaches the limestone.

Warmisters declare heat is killing algae.
It is absurd algae inextricably linked to nutrient and coral devastation is being so ignored.
And if heat is doing the killing then agri runoff has nothing to do with it, or does it?

Absolvement? Farming is essential. Farmers do not waste fertilizer or kill their crops with too much of it.
The unnecessary wasted nutrient is coming EVERY day from sewage.
Evidence indicates about 90 percent of treated sewage is not treated to remove nutrient.
Condoms, tomato seeds, the occasional diamond ring, and other plastic waste is removed. Lumps are tumbled off to the side for landfill. Some works use bio digesters and membrane filters but they do not remove dissolved nutrient from coastal or river outfalls.

Evidence, for example. Evidence of the nutrient loading being suspended during Gladstone port works was not scientifically measured and assessed, measurement was taken about once a week, not daily, not downstream where nutrient flow would be expected.

The northern Great Barrier Reef is absolutely downstream from Gladstone.

Focus at Gladstone has been on sediment, not dissolved nutrient than can be transported vast distances by surface and other currents.

Google; nutrient pollution.

And see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9070000/9070148.stm

How can coastal associated tourism and towns and industry be sustained or built when problems causing damage to water are not being seen and told by major media in this country?

JF Aus,

Damage to the GBR is already happening. The problem now is that there's so much damage it might not recover. Therefore things that cause damage are threats.

"Nutrient pollution is feeding epiphyte growth shutting down photosynthesis in seagrass,"
In a few (relatively small) areas, yes, but not on a large scale, at least in Australian waters.

I suggest you read: http://seagrasswatch.org/Info_centre/Publications/pdf/seagrass_in_australia.pdf

"Nutrient pollution is also feeding invasive algae blooms that cover coral and exhaust available oxygen, suffocating the coral polyp and coral's own zooanthellae algae. A dead zone occurs, some small some covering an entire reef."
Have you any evidence this is happening on the Great Barrier Reef?

"Smothered dead polyp and zooanthellae falls away, expelled they say."
No, a dead polyp is unable to expel anything. Inability to support zooanthellae is not the same as expulsion.

"Warmisters declare heat is killing algae."
Marine biologists declare heat is killing coral.

"It is absurd algae inextricably linked to nutrient and coral devastation is being so ignored."
Who says it's being ignored? ITYF it's been well studied due to the problem of coral embrittlement.

"And if heat is doing the killing then agri runoff has nothing to do with it, or does it?"
I don't know (IANAMB). It may affect susceptibility but it certainly isn't the primary cause.

"Absolvement? Farming is essential. Farmers do not waste fertilizer or kill their crops with too much of it."
I didn't claim farming wasn't essential, and I certainly didn't suggest that they were so grossly incompetent as to apply enough fertiliser to kill their crops! But the problem of agricultural runoff is evidence that some fertilizer is wasted.

"Evidence indicates about 90 percent of treated sewage is not treated to remove nutrient."
What evidence is that?

Anyone contributing to the destruction of the GBR should go directly to jail.
I'd like to think that future Australians will be able to enjoy that place so to hell with anyone who does not respect it.

Aidan

it's hard enough to make productive use of Kimberley water for farming even in the Kimberley - look at the hundreds of millions government has spend on the Ord irrigation schemes. I suspect a cost-benefit analysis of that would not look pretty.

I'm not sure miners need Kimberley water. Its a lot cheaper to extract groundwater. Many of the more mature iron ore mines in the Pilbara are now mining below the water table, and dewatering is becoming a challenge. They have too much water, not too little.

http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/publications/tabledpapers.nsf/displaypaper/3913625ce705f2e0a59df0e848257f02000d5aec/$file/tp-3625.pdf

Aidan,

With respect to you, Aidan, I think you attitude in this discussion is a threat to the GBR because of you pedantic demand for evidence that is likely to deter people from ascertaining the truth about causes and solutions.

Why don't you challenge major media about claim 93 percent of the GBR is now bleached? Did you call for evidence about that? Did you, or is that acceptable because you are a warmister perhaps?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/04/20/and-then-we-wept-scientists-say-93-percent-of-the-great-barrier-reef-now-bleached/?postshare=571461565699118&tid=ss_tw

What evidence do you have the GBR might not recover?

You say only small areas of seagrass are affected. LOL.
In 1982 I saw 100 square kilometres lost out of 150 square km in Western Port Bay Victoria, followed by mass starvation of fairy penguins.
The 1990's State of the Marine Environment Report (Zann) found fifty percent of seagrass lost from the NSW coast. Qld was never measured, not even by Seagrass Watch that is still 'watching'.

I have an ABC news release photo-evidence showing algae all over a reef and the bloom in water against the reef, a photo captioned "coral bleaching". But they missed seeing the algae. LOL
I have taken numerous photos of evidence of algae killing coral and seagrass.

A dead polyp cannot hold itself in the coral, it has to fall out or be eaten.
Do you have evidence otherwise?

Many marine biologists are warmisters doing warmister research and they have no scientific data proving heat underwater is killing that coral underwater.

The nutrient load proliferating algae in GBR waters has not been measured at all point sources and in total, therefore nutrient overload/pollution linked to algae in GBR waters is virtually ignored.
Further, it is not possible to scientifically determine whether nutrient surrounding coral on the GBR proper is coming from agriculture, because the mixed in nutrient from sewage has not been measured and identified.

What evidence do you have of what amount of fertilizer is wasted into GBR waters? You have no evidence of that, do you Aidan?

Work out sewage nutrient removal from the following. N.B ocean outfalls. Google: wastewater treatment plants Sydney Water.

Aidan,

My post above should read, "your" attitude.....

Now I suggest you take the following onboard, impact of algae on coral in addition to impact of anoxia in small and large dead zones.

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/38845/20160427/increased-amount-of-fleshy-algae-break-coral-reefs-food-chain.htm

Sustainability and further building of the underwater and above water tourism industry cannot be achieved if nutrient overload proliferated algae and impact is not seen and addressed absolutely urgently.

Marine industry stakeholders are acting on tourism damage that warmister spin doctors are causing with their nonsense about weeping scientists and 93 percent of the GBR bleached.

http://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/cairns/great-barrier-grief-for-greens-senators-during-planned-cairns-visit/news-story/a5ca5bdbabe973762191d4e5c3971ab2