I don't see what the big deal was to begin with. If Toowoomba (and every other council for that matter) had simply done something about their water supply earlier on, they would not have ended up in a predicament.

What people fail to realise, is that recycled water is cleaner than purified dam water and that's BEFORE it's ADDED to the dam supply. Purified recycled water isn't just pumped to households, it's added to reservoirs including Lake Wivenhoe and Lake Somerset and then along with the rest of the dam water, purified for drinking and supplied to the region.

As for desalination - sure, it sounds good in theory. There's endless amounts of water in the ocean so why not use that to supplement our supplies?
It's simple: it's expensive for both the government and hence consumers, it's environmentally degrading and it tastes bad! (This is from personal experience - Hamilton Island has its own desalination plant and I do not recommend drinking the tap water.)
As Sylvia has mentioned, it is also impractical to use in terms of supplying Toowoomba with water.

I don't think it's a good idea for Toowoomba or South East Queensland to build any more dams because meteorologists have given us a grim outlook in terms of adequate rainfall in the short and long term.

We simply need a government that can stop messing about organising meetings about future meetings on what we could do in the distant future about a water crisis that's upon us now. Instead, we should have a government that doesn't worry about what general public opinion is, but rather what general public needs are and which acts upon those needs as quickly and accurately as possible.

Recycled water is beneficial in the eyes of governments and generally (from recent Australian polls) consumers in terms of meeting demands and achieving economic objectives.

So, to the people of Toowoomba, I say, stop your complaining!