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.