Disagree! As revegitated areas, these areas could earn more as national parks and tourist venues than they ever did as leasehold pastoral grazing that needed something like forty or fifty acres per cow.

Cows/cattle with hooves that chopped up fragile waterway crossings and thereby, contributed bigtime to endless erossian. And as overgrazed leaseholds, west of the great divide, contibuted to invasion by feral weeds and vermin.

(A) tunnel project(s) would allow all Sydney's effluent to be piped westward, as well as cut down travel time via rail to outback NSW. which could, using the aforementioned water, turn large areas of arid wasteland into extremely productive gardens that support intensive crop/food production and jobs, jobs, jobs!

Or large wetlands that become natural firebreaks and timber plantations, native bird and animal sancturies that then support a vastly expanded tourist trade and help address climate change via revegitation. Yes, it would be a mammoth hurculean nation building project, that kees on giving for centuries and never ever becomes less expensive via endless delays and the usual, our own worst enemy, talk feast.

We need to end the usual, half assed projects and useless land lockups in favour of something far better that could be done off budget, while capital is as cheap as it is!
Alan B.

Neglected, vermin-ridden fire traps rarely, if ever, enjoyed by the public, replacing productive land.

Positive and cheerful as always ttbn.

ateday

Your disapproval of what other people say doesn't make what they say negative. It just means that you don’t like what they say. If you were at all a positive person yourself you would say what you think, but you never do that. You just hand out cheap, negative one-liners. You are a pathetic little grinch with no opinions of your own.

National parks are a disaster, & increasing the area simply reduces any even small management.

A mate had a property near the Jenolan caves, with a national park on one boundary. You couldn't have a worse neighbor. Not only was it a breeding ground for feral pests, both flora & forna, but they cost him a fortune in fines by the Pastoral Protection Board. He spent a lot of money in rabbit control only to have the national park flood his place with their out of control rabbits.

Typical green stupidity.

The Qld buy-ups of stations is a glaring example of a lot of tax Dollars achieving a situation of effort & money being spent for the sake of spending !

Yes, It's one thing to declare that an area is now a national park, another to ensure it's properly managed and largely weed and feral animal free!

For mine that means we need to transport managed goat herds in every third of forth year to both clean out the feral weeds and assist with sane, all season, fuel load reduction. And rangers with high powered rifles to keep the feral animal pests at controllable levels with regular culls! Sometimes assisted by professional hunters/or the military in line of skirmish taking out population over runs, e.g., rabbit population explosions!
Alan B.

Tunnel projects would also serve as bomb shelters in the event of hostile aggression by a known threat, e.g. a rouge nation not bound by convention/treaties or the Geneva convention?

No names or pack drill, but all those with a functioning brain know who I am referring to. They would also allow the millions of tons annually, of nutrient loaded waste water to be directed to the parched inland, on the driest inhabited continent in the world, instead of being pumped out to sea in the biggest annual waste of our most valuable asset.

Never ever forget, it was the Snowy Mountians project with its miles of tunnels that ended the Great depression here and ushered in the most prosperous decades and economic expansion that this country had ever experienced.

The good news doesn't end there. Given the increased evaporation and condensation may also spread the natural rainfall/river flows. In all adjacent areas, with all that implies for western greening/water tables/fire risk in our costal forested areas.

Such projects would keep on giving for centuries and add quite massive economic benefits for those same centuries. And with a commodity currently flushed wastefully out to sea, in annul millions of wasted tons. Such projects can be done off budget, so no public money need be risked.

All that is needed is a viable business case. And that could be addressed via water sales/ future timber harvesting/produce production etc-etc., where none is currently available?
Alan B.

Hasbeen. Commonsense is not as common as it used to be but today, probably never ever been rarer?

There was a time when our very survival depended on it almost exclusively along with cooperative capitalism and making people more important than the bottom line. Which if ok, was good enough.

Any profit is a good profit, when the mindset is guided by commonsense, and far more productive, long term goals!

We used to fix things to keep the show on the road! Now-a-days it's all about replacing everything, including people past their, arbitary, use by date!
Alan B.

it was the Snowy Mountians project with its miles of tunnels that ended the Great depression here and ushered in the most prosperous decades and economic expansion
Alan B,
Yes but sadly those kind of Australians & New Australians are now a breed of the past. Today's demographic wouldn't know how to use a shovel or a saw or hammer let alone have the mentality for striving towards such common goals. Thanks mainly to Labor policies, holding out a hand is the only qualification needed to make it through the day.

Voluntary purchase of outback stations by NSW National Parks is not a waste of money and could benefit all Australia and the world ocean.

During 2020-21 I spent 6 months employed on infrastructure repairs on a Paroo River outback station 300 km west of Bourke, where in the 1960’s I was a jackaroo and then overseer. That property of 240,000 acres and 25,000 sheep cut 500 bales of wool yearly. At that time Australia was living off the sheep’s back.
These days the great woolsheds are being blown apart and destroyed while plastic clothes in city washing machines dump micro fibres, together with sewage nutrient pollution including from greenies, into ocean ecosystem currents. On Australia’s east coast those currents flow northwards into waters of the Great Barrier Reef, causing eutrophication. Those currents are also linked to oceans that produce of over 50 percent of world oxygen. Oceans dominate control of world weather.

Lets try to understand beyond reasonable doubt that nutrient overload pollution is causing eutrophication killing coral and seagrass nurseries. Estuary and bay seagrass nurseries are supposed to produce small fish that feed bigger fish.
Fish are not immune to starvation. Farmers know hungry animals do not breed successfully. Yet world fish populations are now so depleted there is a worldwide shortage of animal protein for humans and feed and fertilizer.

The oceans are in big trouble and its nothing to do with extinction or CO2 or free plastic bags, bags that supermarkets are now selling instead. Truth is, it's likely the world will need to go back to the woolsheds and natural fibre to overcome micro plastic pollution.

There are various needs and solutions and a lot of business and employment and revenue to be engineered. Northern wet season rainwater could be transported southward via aqueduct along the Great Dividing Range to the Murray Darling catchment starting inland near Frazer Island Queensland.

Existing wastewater primary treatment can be improved. Recycling of treated but nutrient loaded wastewater could be developed far inland on available properties where both fresh water and nutrient are usually lacking.
Nothing sensible is impossible.

Cont’d……

Cont’d…….
Some outback gas field-to-city pipelines are passing their use by date.
New replacement gas pipeline could be more viable if pipe corridors and old pipes could be shared almost alongside wastewater lines. Wastewater can even be recycled to produce gas and hydro electricity.

Numerous outback stations could be drought proofed, not greened up all-over, but drought proofed by sensibly managing free recycled nutrient-loaded freshwater to grow fodder. Locally grown fodder is more viable to transport to other graziers. National breeding herds must be kept alive.

INLAND WATER is something to think about. Modern day pumps using solar are now viable for lifting water. Water flow downhill over mountains can produce hydro-electricity.

It’s not rocket science. Food and fibre for city people comes from the inland and waste ends up in sewage systems where nutrient bonds to fresh water. That nutrient load is presently dumped from various point sources into ocean coastal alongshore current waters. The fresher surface water with bonded nutrient is pushed by prevailing winds against the coast and northwards in sediment dispersal current, causing damage.

The nutrient load flowing into GBR waters from all point sources is not measured and the impact is not assessed in GBRMPA linked science. That nutrient load is proliferating algae linked to eutrophication and dead coral linked to bad publicity and downturn in international tourism to Australia. Starvation and mass mortality of seabirds has been occurring together with stranding and death of emaciated whales worldwide. Search: starving whales. Check the price of wild fish to eat, and cost of animal feed supplemented with fishmeal, plus cost of fertilizer linked to guano from the last seabirds that used to feed on fish.

NSW National Park authorities would do well to lead the way to manage the whole water ecosystem by sending the ‘wastewater’ nutrient load inland for farmers and graziers, instead of eutrophication killing national fisheries and tourism and nutritional food supply for seafood dependent island people.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3946114/

Do I need a degree from a thesis on the intestine of a tadpole, for the above to be considered?

John Fairfax.

Do I need a degree from a thesis on the intestine of a tadpole, for the above to be considered?
JF Aus,
By the way things have been going since the Goaf era yes, you needed that degree to become an overpaid underperforming bureaudroid !
I hope like mad that those Australians who can still think of not just for themselves will succeed in reintroducing a national Service that will create resurgence of common sense & a sound enough mentality to be a decent citizen.
Those unemployables with studs & tattoos etc can join freak shows to get off the Dole.

Well argued, JF. Time to end the typical political mudsling and just focus on viable solutions. And understand in a world gone mad, we need to remain an island of sanity that finally understands, we need to produce everything we need right here!

Your point about natural fibre is well made! And so refreshing when compared to the usual garbage produced by the usual conga line of conflicted nay-sayers!

None of who have anything of value to add to the debate as alternative viable solutions. Just the usual name calling and negative labeling. And suggestions that extreme right wingers are best suited to manage everything. [Never ever forget it was the extreme right wing Nazi party that took the world to war and basically butchered six million Jews. The fact that they called themselves, national socialists did not mean they were the real deal socialists!]

Sadly, it's these morons who will decide the next election and the policies we take forward into the foreseeable future.

As for pumping water uphill. If You include enough stages every 3 feet. It could all be done via gravity alone and 24/7 in extremely simple, but airtight sealed systems. And pay for all outlays over time via hydro schemes on the final downhill runs?

The uphill stages could be mass produced by robotic assisted factory production. A 3 thousand foot climb would require, e.g., a thousand sealed systems and a hundred or so workers to install them on the uphill slopes. How many uphill slopes could be utilized? Limited only by the intellect of those who select and install our alleged representitives. And the cost of the energy deployed in the manufacture!
Alan B.

the extreme right wing Nazi party
Alan B,
How times changed things, now it's the extreme Left who causes all the problems.
Re; who have anything of value to add to the debate as alternative viable solutions.
How many more times do people have to put forward ideas for solutions ?
When you have an education system so dysfunctional that even the holders of degrees are too dumb to be of even basic use then the only solution is to start with a mentality=changing system i.e. a National Service !
Perhaps schemes such as the Bradfield scheme & other schemes to green the interior of Australia can be achieved. Until people accept that it is the academic elite progessives who are the stumbling block to bettering our society, I'm afraid nothing much will be happening in regards to meaningful progress !

Commenting on OLO is a waste of time and changes nothing! Getting very tired of spending hours on the keyboard and continually correcting unathorised editing. Only to see a very nearly complete article erased. before I can make it a comment. Can't imagine why I bother casting my pearls. Oink oink.
Alan B.

Talking to an older bloke from north of Cooktown, I was told that some stations which had been good working cattle stations for decades have been bought by the Qld State Govt & handed to indigenous occupants of the area. The stations, according to him, are not known to be operated by the new owners & are slowly succumbing to the weeds.
It would be good if someone could enlighten those who forked out the Dollars what the plan is for these stations !
By all means support the indigenous in making a go of it but if these stations were "bought back" simply to become uncontrollable weed infested wasteland than what is the money for ?