When the energy bill is higher than the wages bill!? Companies will as they must, offshore to survive!

S.A. had a chance to go nuclear and become a repository for the world's stockpile of nuclear waste! But whimped, caved in to ill-informed political pressure, then lost the election anyway!

And those that've replaced them, less emboldened or independent!

Might need someone to hold their hand as they cross the road? Would describe the political timidity that exists there and further up the political food chain?

There's no other real choice in a carbon contrained future, if you want to address climate change and keep a manufcturing industry, than the nuclear option. Those that claim you cannot do that with absolutely assured safety are talking out of their backsides and with a level of ignorance that has to been seen to be believed!

Yet have held successive governments to ransom with their activism only available to them via our preferential voting and a compulsory voting system. Were it optional, these minor players would have no such tail wagging the dog power! And the most popular candidates would get the gurnsey!

Albeit, not liked by the backroom power brokers! Given their power would be vastly diminished!

We need to go nuclear and to optional preferential or to proportional representation. Then we need to crack on with the nuclear option as the MSR SMR's option! Thorium and NW!

Then to a very big project like a dual-lane shipping canal that keeps Lake Erye permanently full, and dotted with new space age desal that's cost-effective for broad-scale agriculture!

After that, the Celtic economic miracle and the myriad co-ops that it created in the highly successful initial phase, would be a good template to build on, always providing, you do not repeat their only mistake of allowing debt-laden foreigners to take positions in the real estate market!
Alan B.

Taswegian,
If you're originally from SA, surely you know that SA has for decades been much more reliant on gas for electricity generation than the other states. Yet despite SA doing away with coal fired power, the proportion from gas has fallen below 50% and continues to diminish. Meanwhile we have gas supply security (with a pipeline from Victoria supplementing one from our main source in SA's north east).

Nuclear power does not make economic sense in SA at the moment. With hindsight it may have made economic sense in the noughties, as the very high gas prices since then sent our electricity prices sky high. But gas prices now seem to be on their way back down, and as I said, the proportion of electricity we generate from gas is rapidly falling.

The barrages were constructed with the agreement of the upstream states, but before that the flow of the river ensured that the Lower Lakes were a predominantly freshwater ecosystem. Since then the upstream states have taken much more water for irrigation, and generally irrigated in a less efficient way than SA has.

And yes, we should pump water into the Coorong; not from the Murray, but from Kingston.

I'm not saying SA's management of the Murray is perfect. But the way you;re spinning the issue bears very little resemblance to the truth.

Aidan you might note the Moomba-Adelaide gas pipe was built in 1969 half a century ago. The SEAGas pipe goes to Victoria but that state is looking at an LNG import terminal at Geelong and BHP is getting out of Bass gas. Since the UK and other places need nearly 40% gas fired electricity I'd say that's where SA will get stuck but with higher gas prices. The call for nuclear will get louder by 2030.

The lower lakes are kept artificially fresh by the 1930s built barrages. If sea level rise is as much as they say the sea will overtop them eventually and the Coorong lagoon will merge with the ocean. SA should see the writing on the wall and open the barrages now

Aidan one of these days you may make a statement that is either true, factual, & even balanced.

Please never make a statement that is all three similtaneously, as many of us would pass out with the shock, & could be injured.

The short version of this article is that it is an argument against democracy :) Apparently the author has a long laundry list of people to blame EXCEPT the voters. Voting has consequences, and here we are. At this stage if you're voting Labour or LNP, you're part of the problem by entrenching this travesty

Reading "Can Life Prevail?" by Pentti Linkola (a Finnish eco conservationist) and I think he is on to something. Teh difference ? He just explicitly blames democracy.

https://www.booktopia.com.au/can-life-prevail--pentti-linkola/book/9781907166631.html

Taswegian, I might note trivia but I probably won't. Do you think the age of the Moomba-Adelaide gas pipeline is a problem? If so, why?
I'm aware of the plans for a gas import terminal near Geelong, but IMO it will never be built, as it's cheaper just to pay export customers to get their gas from somewhere else.

Bass gas will continue to be exploited; whether or not BHP is involved is of little consequence, though it may be an indicator that they believe the era of very high gas prices is over

Your comment about the UK is a non sequiter. The amount of gas the UK uses is not constant, and is currently fairly high because they've almost ended their reliance on coal. As they construct more solar and wind power infrastructure, expect to see their figure fall. Anyway, it's irrelevant to SA, which is a lot sunnier than the UK. There's no credible obstacle to getting the figure in SA much lower than 40%.

And if anything, rising sea levels are a good reason NOT to get rid of the barrages, but are a reason to raise them so they don't get overtopped.