The economy has ground to a near halt and a burgeoning number of unemployed exist on government handouts.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
When we return to some semblance of normal, a massive amount of stimulus and investment will be needed to underpin recovery. Infrastructure is the obvious answer.
We have a state government that has refused to consider any planned harvesting of precious water.
The premier has famously said that building dams does not make it rain and this has been supported by Water Minister Lisa Neville.
We have been led to believe that due to climate change there will not be enough water to fill our existing storages. A similar call by Tim Flannery in relation to Sydney storages has trashed any credibility he attracted.
But there is an answer in Victoria, where land has been bought, ample water is available, the financial benefit is demonstrable and it ticks environmental boxes.
That answer? Enlarging Lake Buffalo and Lake William Hovell. When they were constructed in 1965 and 1973, it was planned to increase capacity over time. However, since then, with large amounts of water being bought by the federal government environmental water holder, no one foresaw the impact the already troublesome Barmah Choke would cause.
Also, large amounts of irrigation water are now to being delivered downstream of the choke due to a shift of irrigated crop development in the Sunraysia and Lower Murray. There's a proposal that, along with increasing Buffalo and Hovell capacity, pipelines be built to deliver about 2000 megalitres a day to Nillahcootie. No pumping would be required, as the fall is sufficient to enable the generation of hydro power.
The increased water could be released down the Broken River via Ryans Creek into the Goulburn and the Murray, taking pressure of Barmah choke flows. There's a crying need for irrigation water on the Broken, and productive farmland along the Ovens and King would gain protection from flooding, as would Wangaratta.
Data shows that over the past 10 years, the average flow into Buffalo has been 378 gigalitres with only 24 gigalitres stored, which means 354 gigalitres was spilled.
With William Hovell the inflow has been an average 180 gigalitres a year, 14 gigalitres stored and 167 gigalitres spilled.
Even in the lowest inflow year (2015-16), 138 gigalitres from Buffalo and 80 gigalitres from Hovell was spilled.
It is infuriating that governments pontificate and do not act, they provide knee jerk reactions to problems and vison is beyond them.
