My apologies to Selwyn Johnston. I did not suggest answers to the two questions his article poses. My post above strove to suggest something positive by way of possible solution, rather than just offering empty [albeit so very well deserved] criticism of now all too obvious policy failings. I now realize a solution to the shortage is not really wanted.

Selwyn's first question was: "How did this situation [that of SE Queensland having insufficient water reserves] come about?"

The other question was: "Why is the Beattie government out-sourcing Queensland's water management?"

As an answer to the first question, can I suggest that the situation of having insufficient water reserves was deliberately brought about by covert government policy? The Goss-Palaszczuk effect the author describes, one not arising from shortsightedness, but from deliberate intent!

Answering Selwyn's first question this way, however, begs the question as to why on earth any government would deliberately engineer a shortage of water reserves. I suggest it might do so if it was the case that government had become privy to knowledge that its own (mis)management of WASTE water had been, or promised to be, a cause of significant relatively localized climatic disruption inducive of drought. Especially so if this knowledge was not possessed by, or had been deliberately kept from, the public at large.

The answer to the second question, in the context of government having been arguably long mismanaging waste water, is that by out-sourcing water management at a time of (artificial) shortage it will appear more 'necessary' to recycle sewage back into the reticulated supply.

It would, of course, be difficult to convince electors that the same politicians that were responsible for mismanagement and pressure put upon basic resources by other policies such as migration should continue to oversee water management. Out-sourcing water management gets the politicians/bureaucrats out from under before the real cost of this redirection of waste flows becomes public knowledge.

Cover up! Make the public pay top dollar to drink their own sewage, and think themselves well off to be doing so!

"Water is a failure of successive governments" ?

No, it is a perfect outcome from an “Australian education and way of doing”.

I note Selwyn Johnston's intended candidacy for the federal seat of Leichhardt at the next federal elections. He would do well if he matched his concern at the outsourcing of water management in Queensland with concern at the outsourcing of the security of electoral papers basic to the integrity of federal elections. This latter outsourcing of the security of electoral papers, to wit the marked certified lists used to record vote claims at elections, took effect several years before the Goss-Palaszczuk decision to abort the Wolfdene dam project in SE Queensland.

The use of the term 'outsourcing' in relation to the security of the marked certified lists during a federal election is really to use a misleading euphemism. The proper term would really be 'institutionalization of an ongoing security breach'. The outsourcing of optical mark reading of marked certified lists by the Australian Electoral Commission to a firm called Endata Pty Ltd in 1987, an outsourcing that resulted in the release of the marked rolls during the period between polling day and the end of the period during which an election could be challenged in the court of disputed returns, constitutes a breach of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. That Act requires that all such papers remain within the custody of the Divisional Returning Officers throughout this period. Marked certified lists have continued to be mishandled in this way ever since.

If ever there was to be large scale fraudulent vote claiming at federal elections, this institutionalized security breach provides an opportunity for removal of possible documentary evidence thereof.

For outsourcing of water management to be seriously considered by Australian governments, State or Federal, is really only believable if elections are rigged on a large scale, and profoundly influence the composition of all parliamentary political parties.

Grants of monopoly of supply of an absolute necessity with profit guaranteed by the power of taxation.

It is a curious fact that a one-time director of Endata Pty Ltd is recorded as having the birth-place of Denver, Colorado, USA. Colorado, where, as the saying goes, "water runs uphill to money"!

“Grants of monopoly of supply of an absolute necessity with profit guaranteed by the power of taxation.”

“Eatable” English, please.
Playing words helps a little for executing particular technical/engineering issues beneficial to a society and country at whole rather than to fat cats syphoning money offshore English colony of Australia.

In commenting upon Selwyn Johnston's article in my second post above I have suggested that successive governments (not only in Queensland) have deliberately cancelled planned investment in water storage infrastructure, cancellations that are now seen as having eroded water reserves that may otherwise have dealt with drought conditions. I have further suggested that this may have been done to achieve two ends.

The first being to create a profit opportunity for 'privatized' foreign investment in a water supply monopoly.

The second being to cover up the role of government over the years in urban waste water mismanagement, mismanagement that may well have exacerbated the drought conditions that are seen as underlying present shortages and restrictions.

I cannot take credit for providing evidential backup for the suggestion that waste water mismanagement may have exacerbated the drought. What appears to be evidence for that claim has been presented on this forum by another regular contributor, KAEP, from December 2004 until the present. Out of a total of 366 posts made over that interval by KAEP, 107 have related directly to the science of regional climate distortion effects of sea surface pollution arising largely from urban waste water disposal practices. Some of the most informative, in my opinion, are:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4053#28946

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4186#32856 "Throughout history, scientific breakthroughs have come mainly from the public's imagination."

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4194#38655

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4938#56111

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5214#65040

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5421#69062

Interestingly, in one of KAEP's posts addressing the underlying population factor in water management ( http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3505#8020 ), I find these concluding words: "Such audacity makes one wonder about the validity of the state electoral system. It is in my view, something that needs a closer examination." Too right.

These days that system is common to all States and the Commonwealth. Watch this, Selwyn.

There was a veeery short info about implementation of a federal government's pre-election promise to invest $50 Mln. in a fast broadband Internet. So far, $1.2 Mln. were put in mates' pockets as wages, and $200,000 - on technical improvements directly.

That is AUSTRALIAN way of doing - so, state governments were not so mistaken postponing feeding up the privileged to suck their wellbeing from public coffins.