If you can read this, thank a Teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a Soldier.
With the Australian lungfish, the Mary River turtle and Mary River cod now promoted up the food chain to a position higher than humans I trust Head Greenie Garrett has an answer for Queenslands water problems.
This is the second dam that the Greenies have killed in in Queensland over the last 10 odd years with no increase in infrastructure to accommodate population increases.
How do we rid ourselves of these Green pests?
Kev
I agree with you that Garrett’s decision was wrong, but I still think there is a place for Greenies.
Been back to SVN lately? Seen the hillsides near Nha Trang still recovering from defoliants? Visited the institutions for people with congenital malformations? Vietnam has one of the highest incidence rates in the world. 19,395,369 gallons of this stuff was sprayed in the country between 1962 and 1971.
We lost a daughter back in 1982 as a result of a congenital malformation. I can’t prove it of course, but a perusal of the statistics of malformations in children of Vietnam Veterans is pretty convincing in terms of a causal relationship.
You don’t have to be a Greenie to understand that the environment is important, and sometimes has to be protected. Using this as a political weapon is where it all goes wrong.
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Traveston Crossing is prime agricultural land close to major population centres. It’s too good to sacrifice to a dam – a shallow, area inefficient one at that. The Bligh government wants to put the dam here because it’s cheaper. The fact is Labor has failed to make the necessary decisions in infrastructure over the last god-knows-how-many years and it needs an easy way out to provide water to the rapidly growing south-east corner. There are superior places to put the dam that don’t sacrifice prime agricultural land – it’s just that they’re further out and going to cost more and the state is broke due to mismanagement. But dams stay around for a long time and prime agricultural land is not as abundant as most Australians realise – especially land in convenient locations. It’s worth spending the money to get it right.
Whether that’s what was floating around Garrett’s cadaverous head when he vetoed it, I don’t know. But I actually think he stopped the Bligh government screwing over the people of Queensland yet again.
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but I still think there is a place for Greenies NEVER!! Conservationsists, Scientists, Farmers, Bushman and even Park Rangers but never Greenies. They always spice their opinions with an anti-capitalist sauce and that is never good for the country.
I don’t argue for or against a Traveston but the pseudo science used to stop the dam. Wolfdene is another case in point where the planned dam was stopped for greenie votes. They are fucking dangerous! Bolt states the country hasn’t built a dam for 24 years and if that is the case then it’s bordering on criminal, partcularly while no one has the vision to think past an electoral cycle and start, and finish, the process for major water infrastructure facilities. Where is the vision of those who started the Snowy Mountain Scheme?
Arable agricultural land…I had occassion to visit a mates farm on the banks of the West Aligator river in the NT. He had previously farmed vegetables on the Downs but got sick of the varying water availability. In todays society we can grow the food anywhere and ship overnight. By the same token we can also move the water to where we need it overnight as well. CY O’Connor opened up the Goldfields in Kalgoorlie with a 600 Km pipeline over a hundred years ago and we still lack the vision to even meet that old target.
But what’s the point of talking about vision when the best laid plans of men are brought to nothing by mentally deficient Greenies and their placing an insect or animal above us in the food chain.
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Queensland?
Who owns the pub there now?
I dunno the ins and outs of this dam thingo, but Barnaby Joyce wuz agin it. He’s a pretty straight shooter so I’d like to know why he was not in favour of the dam.
I think the Snowy was one of the greatest achievements in my time, if we need infrastructure – build it I say. There will always be someone saying that a rare species of frog will be wiped out but humans first in my book.
Cheers
Cav
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If we took all the bottled water out of the world supermarkets ( sod the yuppies or whatever they are called now) and poured it all back into the ground…problem solved…..ban bottled water…it has been proven that bottled water has more crap in it than comes out of your house tap……
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Jim Fryar has a good article explaining why this was a right decision but for the wrong reasons at http://jimunro.blogspot.com/2009/11/traveston-crossing-right-decision-wrong.html .
The dam was appalling decision made for political reasons and utterly impractical. Like Mr Fryar, I find it disturbing that people are more concerned over wildlife than the effect on the people of the Mary Valley of blatent government bullying.
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