ttbn, you can't water deserts, That's probably news to the Israelis. It's folk like you with no knowledge of how these things could be done, are who prevent it being done! Not the relatively simple engineering.

The Kalgoorlie pipeline would be impossible now but when it was built by our forebears, a done deal!

Our current crop of useless pollies couldn't build the snowy mountains scheme because like ttbn they know for sure and certain these things can't be done!

Only two things prevent us watering a below sea level desert and that is visionless prevaricating (photo op) pollies and the robber barons now controlling the price of energy and the permitted paradigm

Energy for less than a cent PKWH, i.e., nuclear waste burning MSR would allow us to put space-age desal anywhere we dam well like! And from an inexhaustible source.

As for the cost well there'd be a charge for the water and the rest would come from the annual billions we'd earn as the world's premier repository for nuclear waste. which in MSR is just largely unspent fuel that could power this nation and the world for a thousand years and beyond.

The cost isn't a factor, money has never been cheaper and energy can only grow dearer! except for us, if we embrace the proposal. Not saying we could do this overnight but in a similar timescale to a completed Snowy mountains scheme flaws and all!

The lead time won't ever shorten by the brain dead deferrals of the past and if the recent firestorms don't tell you we need to put water on our inland nothing will!

Time to end the moribund prevarication and just get on with it and with bipartisan sanity!
Alan B

Water on deserts doesn't need to be only desal but could include nutrient-rich effluent. Add a few trace elements like those removed by thousands of years of burning and you can grow anything,

Broad-scale irrigated agriculture is part of the climate change solution/adaptation we need to survive and wherever deserts are turned into the granaries they one were they also become CO2 sequestering sollutions we need!

We just need to deal out the robber barons and their spit lickle servants/pollies! ttbn we can't build snowy one or put a man on the moon and if man were meant to fly he'd grow wings! All impossible before and since in closed minds, mate!
Alan B.

We just need to deal out the robber barons and their spit lickle servants/pollies!
Alan B,
You forgot the average Australian who doesn't want to move a finger to make the pollies etc accountable or heaven forbid, help the decent ones !
There are people who demand the rest of us pay for them to do nothing but they refuse to get behind a National Service scheme !
It should really be; No National Service-no benefits. If Mummy & Daddy don't like the idea they can keep them & stop demanding we pay !
Those who cost us hundreds of thousands if not millions of Dollars because they can't keep off drugs should be given an ultimatum, National Service or no treatment ! A few months out in a Bush camp & some exposure to discipline will see them off the drugs. Also, many unwanted teen pregnacies would be prevented too. It'd only take two or three months for them to come around where they start thinking for themselves & start to be responsible.
Many Centrelink officers could be made to become responsible also & as their workload lessens they could become more employment agency orientated.

Why the hell would you want to spend billions watering inland deserts.

Alan, Israel is not much bigger than greater Sydney, & offers no comparison.

There are 10s of thousands of acres of good arable land between Brisbane & the boarder. It would be easily & cheaply watered with some dams on the rivers flowing through it.

Why isn't it used for a lot more productive agriculture than running a few cows, & pet horses? Because it is just not profitable producing food in Oz. It is a huge gamble growing produce, when you don't know what price it is likely to bring at the precise moment yours is ready for market.

People are going to have to pay a lot more for Oz grown food, or see the growth of food imports grow just as quickly as all manufactured goods imports have grown.

It has always amazed me that we don't have a railway line, running from the Queensland coal fields to WAs iron ore precinct, carting coal one way, & iron ore the other. We should have 2 large steel producing areas, one on each side of the country, but then, I suppose our wage structures make it impossible.

Runner: what could be more anti-life than encouraging people to have children they can't afford or have the time to look after? That's what happens when the Catholic Church lies about contraception.

Aidan: do you know how many billions of dollars and years of effort it takes to pipe things thousands of kilometers?

Not only are you economically and logistically illiterate, but you're politically conservative as well. That worries me. Are you seeing a psychologist or a psychiatrist?

Removing baby bonuses would curb births to great extent ! Making fathers support their children too would help.
Migrants with more than three children need not apply !