The Senate Inquiry Report is out. Links are at http://www.savethemaryriver.com
While it can't stop the dam it does a good job of pointing out its flaws and the environmental risks associated with building it. Much is being made of the social issues surrounding the dam but the #1 Recommendation is about the environment(odd considering the source) but nonetheless a wake up call- This dam could be an environmental disaster. Mary River cod, Mary River Turtle, Richmond Birdwing Butterfly, Tusked frogs, Giant Barred Frog, Cascade Tree frog,giant spiny crayfish, Oxleyan Pygmy Perch,Water Mouse. The Queensland Lungfish, migratory species (Coxen's fig parrot, The Great Sandy Straits -a Ramsaar listed wetlands-and Fraser Island -all would be put at risk if this proposal proceeds.

We need the environmental community more than ever? I know the politics are ugly but the reality is that Queensland State Labour is engaging in hypocritical behaviour of the highest order. I am a resident of Oz by marriage and the politics of this decision are incomprehensible to me but I do know that the threats to the environment are real and avoidable.

Tricia,

Don't be downhearted. You are winning. You say "(odd considering the source)" in relation to the Senate Inquiry Report. Its not odd at all. Beattie and the Feds are in all likelihood hand in glove over the Traveston Crossing proposal, not to push it through, but to in the end 'be prevented' from constructing it. But only after having gone through all the requisite ritual motions.

Your confessed status to being Australian by marriage may give you a clearer perspective in recognising what may really be going on, and how the community for which you appear to be speaking is perhaps nothing but a callously used pawn in a much bigger game of selling off Australia's public water utilities to foreign private ownership.

Beattie only needs the Traveston Crossing Dam as a plan, proof that his government is 'doing something' in the present term about the water shortage that is plainly evident to every voter in SEQ. He neither needs, nor wants, to actually build it. Consequently, it is all but necessary that this particular site should, for a variety of reasons, be seen to be, in the end, to have been an unwise choice. That way, it can in due course be abandoned for very good reasons without loss of too much face. Much the same scenario probably applies in NSW to the Tillegra Dam proposal, from the promised construction of which the NSW State government is already showing signs of wriggling out.

Beattie needs continued water shortage to justify the embedding of privatised water utilities in positions of artificial advantage where voters would reject such arrangements in the same way Toowoomba did if they had the chance. The foreign owned utilities need access to cheap water that they can resell at top market rates. The only water available under these conditions is recycled effluent, and that only if reasonably good rain continues to fall, and they can then force it on consumers.

Check out these threads:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5616#75114

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=256