Well, Hasbeen,
Have you checked out Foxy's link of 21 December, on Page 2 of this thread:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/underground-dams-the-solutions-to-australias-drought-problems-20140316-34v8m.html
(You may have to cut and paste to your address-bar.)

The ideas in the link are from: "Craig Simmons, professor of hydro-geology at Flinders University and director, National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training" - not my idea at all.
And, as a professor of 'hydro-geology', you'd think he might just know what he's talking about, hey?
I just borrowed what I thought sounded like a better alternative to cutting channels or installing masses of piping and pumping stations - although even such pumping stations could possibly be totally solar-powered (the latest 'smart idea', you know).
(And, the pipe and pumps could be Aussie-made, you think?)(Maybe even the solar panels/array?)
(And, installed by a whole heap of tremendously happy immigrants?)

What is food security (and potential export) worth?

Na, everyone says "it'a too hard", "it'll cost a bucket-load", "it won't work".
What a lot of myopic, small-minded, peekaboo pessimists. I've got no time for all the hyped-up negativity.

And, the idea is not for grazing cattle, it's for horticulture - greenhouses as far as the eye can see. Beeautifullll!
And masses of lovely wheat-grass, maybe lentils, snake beans, tomatoes, cucumbers - and even avocados-under-glass. Spectaculaaar!
(Where there are ideas, there also needs to be inventiveness and fortitude, not squeamishness.)

And, if 'Basin' water is coming from PNG, then sling in some sweet potato, PNG 'Koa-koa', for good measure!

And hey, might help Scomo to meet Kyoto protocols? He can take credit for the idea - I ain't proud.

Oz, grow up! (The world's going to hell in a hand-basket and everyone's busy whittling a new-style toothpick! Bah, humbug.)

a professor of 'hydro-geology', you'd think he might just know what he's talking about, hey?
Saltpetre,
talk yes, do ? Well that's another part of the story.
Such a project should not involve any high tech for reliability's sake nor is it needed.
In comparison to the snowy scheme, this one would be child's play in a sand pit

Saltpetre, the talk is about getting water to the drought stricken in the inland, hence my remarks. I did mention that we may sometime find a product that could afford the cost of getting water inland.

However, why the hell do you want to move the water & people to a rather inhospitable bit of the country to do this. Surely it makes more sense to move the people to where the water is. That way you save a fortune in water moving activity, & there is nothing wrong with the country up north.

The Ord scheme was a financial flop. They developed the water, but nobody came for the party. It took almost 20 years, & a huge amount of experiment & loss by farmers to develop suitable models for agricultural production in the area. Now it is a success, so could be a model for similar development in similar regions, where nature supplies the water, & we just have to catch & store it.

No pie in the sky dreams, academic or general public required, & no pointless expense required. We are not likely to run out of suitable productive land in more suitable areas where the water is available, in a hell of a long time.

One of my neighbours has spent a few million on centre pivot irrigation systems to irrigate from Canungra Creek on a couple of hundred acres of laser levelled land. Guess what he grows. Turf of course, he is too smart to grow food, that's a mugs game. He has another thousand acres suitable for development, if a profitable crop could be found. He even tried sugar, but freight costs to the mill killed that.

There is at least 50,000 acres of top land in this district alone capable of producing almost anything, all within spitting distance of the rivers, doing nothing but a bit of grazing. It used to be dairy country, but that is no longer viable due to pumping costs & competition from Gippsland, where irrigation is not required.

Continued

Continued.
Belly old mate, Israel is a postage stamp compared to what we have done with the Snowy. The same with the Darling, where flood catchment is a huge success, although much hated by the greens. Think Cubbie station. However mate, all that, Israel & here is down hill irrigation. No one is trying to shove water up hill where it doesn't want to go. Now the greenies want it all for environmental flows.

We have a couple of irrigation dams around Boonah. The farmers pay $25,000+ a year in access & infrastructure maintenance, plus per megalitre charge. When it got a bit dry that bludger Beattie, [you know Labor premier], pinched all their water for power house cooling. Sent quite a few broke, with no income, but still expected to pay their $25,000 access fees. He was in the business of pinching all our irrigation water here. We had conferences, meetings & hundreds of bureaucrats all over us, until it rained & the dams filled. Never saw another bureaucrat. [Note. I am secretary of our local irrigation committee].

We used to have a great rice industry on the Burdekin river until the Magpie geese & restrictions on controlling them killed that. I don't think they have found a new use for all that water, & the land is right there. Why the hell would you want to pump it west?

As I said, you have to be mad to grow food on Oz. If the government doesn't kill you directly, their pandering to the greens will.

Hasbeen,
Practically all of the water in the Great Artesian Basin comes from the Great Dividing Range. What is the "research" that says otherwise?

The water from the GAB doesn't come up in hundred metre diameter holes (even if thats what some of the mound springs look like) so they certainly won't be needed for recharge.

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individual,
>of course there's a lack of uplift because of lack of a big body of water.

Big bodies of water don't cause uplift. As I said further up the thread, the Pilbara is arid despite being next to the enormous body of water known as the Indian Ocean!

Uplift is caused by:
• Mountains (Australia's mountains are relatively small so don't cause a huge amount of rain, but they're still a lot wetter than the lowlands).
• Convection (air rises in some parts of the world and descends in others. Air pressure is LOW where it rises and HIGH where it descends. In central Australia it's usually HIGH, even when Lake Eyre is full).
• Weather fronts (when two air masses meet, one tends to go over another. But these are also associated with low pressure systems - they're effectively blown away from the highs).

Hasbeen pandering to the greens?
Now you may mean the party, at times both sides need the greens to pass things in the chook pen we call senate
But I think you are referring to CONSERVATIONISTS a group that is from all sides of our population
No government dare try to tell them they have no right to have concerns
EG Cubby station