What we do need is a national infrastructure policy, a national rail, road and air policy, an national company law and a national criminal code.

I agree that uniformity would help, and I would add libel law to that list. But that doesn't necessarily require federal control. Also, maintaining diversity and competition between states can be a good thing.

This is pitiful given the fact that most of the rain falls in northern Australia and most of the people live in the south it is a matter of urgency that this water be dammed and diverted to where it is needed.

That would be an expensive white elephant. It would be better to get people to live nearer to the water, or simply stop wasting it in the south. It would probably be more expensive, and use more energy (= greenhouse emissions) than desalination.

I also agree with you on corruption. Smaller governments are easier to buy off. But there is greater risk if we got rid of them because there would be far fewer people keeping an eye on the federal government.

Last time I looked building dams does not destroy areas. The amount of land they cover and the environmental damage they do is negligible.  In a continent so very short of water, and likely to get shorter as the years roll on, it would not be a white elephant but a very useful project.

With respect, it would be a lot more expensive by an order of magnitude to move millions of people to the north of the continent as well than it would be to dam few rivers and divert them southwards. Desalination plants require lotsof energy and that means coal and that means greenhouse.

The Fitzroy River in Western Australian near Broome for instance. During the wet season puts more water into the oceans than any other on earth save the Amazon. For the rest of the year it's dry--a perfect place for a dam.

Even if we want to move people north we will still have to build dams to supply the new agricultural areas, towns and cities we would have to create there.

As it is water could be pumped southwards to Perth, whose rainfall is becoming increasingly sparse and unreliable. Hydro power from the dams could power the pump-stations with plenty left over to feed into the national grid.

There are many other locatons in northern Australia that are similar. There are some that could put large quantities of water straight into the Murrray/Darling system at the cost of no more than a few billion dollars each. Once they are built they produce no greenhouse gasses at all and very little during construction. They can be used to produce Hydro-Electricity which is one of the cleanest, least greenhouse gas emitting forms of power generation ever devised.

Besides who would want to live up there in the tropics? Australia is uncomfortable enough even down south.

The sceptism this suggestion has encountered here just goes to show how unaccustomed Australians are to thinking in such terms; largely because in the past such plans have been frustrated by small-minded state governments.

The Australian States have had 150 years to produce coordinated and sensible laws on all manner of things but have wholly failed to do so.

To give a notorious example: they couldn't even be bothered building their railways on the same gauge.

It will need the Federal government to pass uniform national law codes, I'm afraid.

Desalination does mean coal under the present regime where renewable sources of energy have not been developed and deployed.

Please enlighten me about how the creation of artificial lakes "destroys areas". 

(Yes and I've heard all those overstated arguments about how the cold water kills everything and the rotting vegetation under the water causes greenhouse emissions and so forth, so you'd better have something substantial to say.)

The present Greenie revulsion towards damming rivers, perhaps stemming from the Franklin Dam affair in the 1980's, is dogmatic foolishness. They present dams as if they were leaky nuclear power-plants, whereas they are do almost no damage at all and are necessary for both cities and agriculture. They can also generate clean, green electricity.

The problem with the Franklin was that they were going to build it in the middle of a World Heritage area; a breathtakingly lovely and unique ecosystem.

I was in Tasmania at the time and opposed it and would do so again if they tried to do it today.

The harsh and desolate wastes of northern Australia possess none of these endearing characteristics. Even if a few square miles of it are submerged, who cares? There's plenty more where it came from.

The continent can support its present population if we are prepared to treat it properly, harvest water from where it falls and transfer it to where it is needed.

Otherwise not.

The Fitzroy River in Western Australian near Broome for instance. During the wet season puts more water into the oceans than any other on earth save the Amazon. For the rest of the year it's dry--a perfect place for a dam.

Where did you get this from? How much water does it put out?

NoComment, would you mind signing up for an account?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Bracks-lashes-Canberra-over-water-funds/2006/12/19/1166290529583.html

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks has lashed out at the federal government for failing to come up with funding it promised for vital infrastructure projects.

Victoria is seeking a contribution from Canberra for a $268 million "goldfields superpipe" linking central Victorian towns with the Murray-Goulburn system.

The state government is putting $101 million into the project, local water authorities will put in $52 million, with the remainder, $115 million, expected to come from Canberra.

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Which is precisely why it would be a good idea to divert water from north Queensland down into the Murrray/Darling to increase maintain its biodiverity. It's dying now.

On a more general level the rivers that empty into the Arafura Sea and the Pacific Ocean and the Carpentaria are very short. There really isn't much there. The advantages of diversion to both humans and wildlife in the interior are enormous.

Dams obstruct water flow only while they are filling up. After that the flow returns to normal. Australian flora and fauna are well adapted to seasonal water shortage and should be able to cope very well.

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I have not costed them, but I'm sure they'd be a small fraction of the cost of say road maintainance in Sydney and Melbourne, or for that matter national credit card debt, or our dysfunctional education system.

There would be no trouble borrowing the necessary funds from the Superannuation Funds. They are always looking for 'nuts and bolts' projects to invest in as they are a lot more secure than the stock market. The problem has never been shortage of money so much as shortage of imagination and the jealousy of small minded State governments.

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It is a rough place one of the driest and most inhospitable on earth. I have seen plenty of desert and semi-desert Australian bush and its no Lothlorien, not even a Franklin river. And there's a lot of it. The amount of land affected will be miniscule and for the most part temporary.

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The engineering projects broached here would not do extensive damage to any eco-system as a whole, and would open up new vistas for other richer eco-systems to develop. I have no objection to using nature and adapting it to our purposes, what I object to is abusing nature and laying the land waste.

Most of this has already been done by private enterprise. The environmental impact of all of the projects here mooted would be insignificant compared to dividing the land up into cattle properties and overstocking by a factor of between three and ten, as was the blithe and ignorant practice of past generations.

State-directed projects could have written into their charter that they would do everything in their power to preserve the environment. 

We need to keep a sense of proportion. The impact of a few dams is as nothing beside a coal powerplant, a steel mill or a chemical factory, yet we are willing to tolerated those in our midst, or at least not do without the benefits they bring.

And perhaps those who feel sorry for the wildlife (of whom I am definitely one) reflect on the carnage inflicted on them by our highway system every day of every year. Compared to this dams and pipelines are benign.

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Your plan is most practicable and attractive. As and alternative we could use nuclear demolition charges to open up an inlet in Spencer's Gulf to let the sea in. Soon after we could use even stronger nuclear charges to knock a hole in the Owen-Stanley Range in PNG to give Australia greater access to the tropical monsoons.  That's the ticket.  I'm glad your seeing things my way. Just kidding.

All ad hominem attacks and sarcasm aside Australia is a harsh and barren place and will need to be substantially modified if we are to thrive here in any numbers. We have already done this in a thoughtless, uncaring and destructive way. Lets continue in a thoughtful, caring and creative way.

None of the creatures in the Murray/Darling would object in the slightest to having more water in their river. None of the animals in WA would mind at all if water was piped to them from the Fitzroy. For one thing we would stop overusing the meagre amounts of water in the local rivers and allow them to flow even more freely.

I realize this is fairly heretical stuff but something along these lines will be necessary in the medium to long term future. Desal plants are very greenhouse-nasty and dump a lot of very, very salty water into the sea nearby to the detriment of the local marine creatures.

If you are prepared to accept that as the the price of living in Australia then I don't see what the problem is with collecting and diverting fresh water from the north to the south.

Unless we wish to pack our bags and return to Eurasia (and its a little late for that) we will have to do something substantial fairly soon.