Building an inland canal between Lake Eyre and port headland, not as difficult as many would assume. Given there are a series of dry salt lakes in a line between that are already below sea level and just need an electrically powered dragline to open a short and narrow strip that allows the ocean to reclaim those lakes, cutter dredges can move more earth more economically than any other form of earthworks.

And run the spoil through towed barges set up as gravity separation mineral processing plants that recover all the heavier mineralisation that bound to be there! And separated in the towed separation plant. All of which could be powered along with a floating maintenance workshop and desal plant, by inboard MSR thorium.

Ditto the electrically powered draglines.

Both legs of this project could be started simultaneously with the other leg starting in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and only a small range of soft limestone hills needing electric draglines to lower them down, with a few dozen electric dump trucks engaged in removing and stockpiling the limestone spoil.

This limestone could be crushed before final stockpiling and saved to use as a flocculant? Any igneous rock could be saved and used to line the inside banks etc.to prevent erosion and as a road to take the construction crews in and out etc. As they build the power plants desal plants and small towns alongside said canal.

Lock gates at either entrance would enable huge northern tides to flow in a single one-way direction to allow shipping to use less power except for normal maneuvering.

Add a few seaside desal and, 2 cents per Kwh, MSR power plants and we could transform the two driest states WA and SA and also recharge the normal sea breezes with more moisture that carry far further inland.

I shouldn't be surprised if this project, its mineral recovery tail wouldn't pay for its own (deep and wide) construction costs?

From the sale of recovered alluvial minerals. Those same salt lakes, bound to be a natural, chock block, repository?
Alan B.

The author needs correction for relevance by moi :)

After the political chaos last week - there is likely to be little disruption to Australia's Adelaide centric shipbuilding program under the new ministry selected by Scott Morrison.

On Monday August 27, 2018:

- former Defence Minister Marise Payne was moved sideways to Foreign Minister

- former Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne was appointed Defence Minister. Adelaide politician Pyne thus will maintain the Adelaide centric status quo.

Federal money dependent Adelaide remains Australia's naval shipbuilding center due to the electoral voting/seats. He/she who pleases Adelaidians will stay in government in Canberra.

Rising politician Steve Ciobo from Queensland has been appointed Defence Industry Minister.

Of other Ministers with influence over shipbuilding:

- Prime Minister Morrison will likely maintain the policy settings of his former Treasurer role in retaining most naval shipbuilding in Adelaide.

- this is cemented by Mathias Cormann retaining his Finance Minister role with strong influence over shipbuilder and submarine maintainer ASC's role in Adelaide.

Potential disruptor Tony Abbott remains in backbench limbo with no ministerial power to alter the naval shipbuilding mix. So far Prime Minister Morrison has resisted any rightwing factional pressure to return "Mad Monk" rival Abbott to the Ministry.

Pete
Pontificating at http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2018/08/status-quo-retained-in-australias.html

hopefully the new defense minister will put an end to all the virtue signalling and emasculation of the males in the defence force. I don't hold out a lot of hope.

Hopefully, the wreckers will remain on the backbench until their voters decide their fate. Which no amount of BWS shovelled by the shipload will change, in the interim the new team needs to crack on with what their most important task. Tackling the consequence of drought in the short term with handouts and CHARITY? And some long-term solutions

As for Mr Abbott? I think his machinations have already done enough damage and at last divided the liberal liberals from the conservative liberals

. And not before time! Maybe, just maybe now we can get a little more democracy into preselection and or rolling a PM? My bet is, Mr Abbot has no more shots in the locker and few if any friends in the pre-selection committee.

Albeit, the shock jocks and the Murdoch media will be all over this like a tin roof on a shanty? And given a landslide loss, will wonder what was this man thinking or smoking?
Alan B.

Building an inland canal between Lake Eyre and port headland,
Alan B,
How many more times will it take to draw attention to this solution before some bureaucrat accidently gets some sense knocked in & gives the go-ahead for this. Apart from the irrigation bonuses there'll be hundreds of millions opened up for lakeside land real estate.
Just so to get lay some bait let's begin every thread about this with that australian religion symbol $$$$$$$$$.

Alan B,
Come to think of it, the flooding of Lake Eyre should please the rising sea level alarmists because all that water running from the ocean to inland Australia should lower the sea level by at least a millimetre. ;-)