Often makes me wonder why doctors marry such naïve women. What is it about them.
runner,
Because to pass multiple choice questions doesn't really equate to real intelligence ! Cemeteries are silent witness to that.

The Bradfield plan Bazz? Regurgitated a number of times in various guises, but always shelved due to projected prohibitive costs. However, one variant that might be affordable? Injects northern Q'ld water directly into the nearby Great Artesian Basin? Which as you know Bazz, ends somewhere in northern S.A. If the volume taken out is always less than that injected! An eternal source and where it's needed!?

Aside from that, we are an island nation surrounded by water and virtual child's play to desalinate and pump miles inland with two measures at hand,i.e., Deionisation dialysis, which desalinates salt water much more cost-effectively than traditional reverse osmosis!

[ In fact in Texa trials some years ago now, it was found to be quarter of the cost of membrane filtration and produced 95% potable water in volumes large enough for cost-effective, broad-scale irrigation. We could do it here if only we had US power prices, one third of what we charge ourselves here!]

Second part, solved by also embracing new-age nuclear energy (MSR thorium) that's safer than coal, cheaper than coal and cleaner than coal! And used to burn other nations nuclear waste profitably, able to produce domestic power for less than a cent PKWH!

Energy that cheap means we can pump desalinated water anywhere, utilising the fall of the land, for the most part, to eliminate thousands of miles of costly pipelines! Which is what has always killed the Bradfield scheme at birth!
Alan B.