Arid Australia is already dammed (damned). All the low-hanging fruit for dams has been used up for yonks. Yet politicians grow the population like a mad science experiment. 19m at 2000, 27m now, race on for 40m.

The poster-child for woke water-stupidity is Perth. Rainfall has shrunk, runoff to Perth dams is down nearly 90%. So, the plan is, double the population, chuck another (Alkimos) "net zero" desal-plant on the barbie, pimp yourself as a "world leader in climate resilience".

Yeah ... well. Nothing is going to be done about. We have idiots in charge, and idiots still voting for them. Australia is rooted.

Those who think Australia's population can grow 0.5m every year have short memories of dry times. Think water rationing and expensive food along with unaffordable housing.

There are glaring examples of water wastage in Australia. For example the Lower Murray Lakes evaporate 1000 GL in dry years yet they are essentially just underused boating lakes not a crucial asset. Recently they began pumping lake water to the adjoining hypersaline Coorong. That water could be used upstream to help feed Australia's booming population.

Sorry, I disagree. one can hang the biggest bucket in the world and if it doesn't rain. All you've got is a big useless bucket. And wasted billions. Dams evaporate 50% or more of their storage capacity.

One of the things management teaches, is, there is always a better way. Injecting water into aquifers might be one of those ways, and that eliminates waste via evaporation.

Moreover, if that aquifer is the great artesian basin, then increased water becomes available from northern Queensland to S.A. Northern Australia measures rainfall in metres. Some of that might be pumped as suggested.

But better yet is deionisation dialysis desalination that produces 4 times the volume of Memtech. And enough volume to make irrigation on broad scale agriculture, cost effective.

The key is ultracheap electricity for both the above. And my friends that electricity is MSR thorium or better yet, MSR nuclear waste burners, burning mostly unspent fuel we are paid millions to take. The latter producing PKWH for less than a cent.

The surplus heat from walk away safe MSR technology, could be used to evaporate seawater or effluent, to make safe thoroughly sanitised drinking water. Finally, we now can use seawater for electrolysis and green hydrogen production.

Ultracheap power makes pumping city effluent hundreds of miles inland a cost-effective irrigation proposal on the driest inhabited continent on earth!

Thinking within a fixed circle of (fifties time warp) ideas limits the questions. And if the questions are limited, so also are the possible answers.
Alan B.

Dams evaporate 50% or more of their storage capacity.
Alan B,
Yes, however, doesn't evaporation directly translate into eventual precipitation ? Right now is the time to realise the Bradfield scheme & flood Lake Ayre. Australians need to stop looking at such projects as investment schemes for profits next month. Make an easy start now & as the project starts to pick up so will the economics & social aspects that come with a project designed for the future. Keep private investors away from it & it will be a success beyond present realisation !

The Bradfield scheme is un-fundable. The business case analysis and possible returns does not stack up. The pipeline could cost up to a trillion.

Farmers as a collective pay SFA tax, yet expect the taxpayer to fork over annual billions in drought/flood mitigation relief and for this or that, water infrastructure, country roads and rail, etc.

That said, pumping northern water into the Great Artisian basin does about the same thing as the Bradfield scheme, given the sheer size and length of that aquifer.

If the goal is to transport volumetric water south? Then the G.A.B does that. Moreover, the suggestion repressurises the basin.
Alan B.