Stop the unacceptable draining of billions of litres of water from the struggling Murray Darling system and start looking at Tasmania’s access water.

Media has given much attention recently to Melbourne engineers who have developed a proposal to pipe drinkable water from Tasmania to Victoria in a quantity that would supply sufficient water to major cities Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo.

Tasmania’s river run-off which currently flows out to sea would be gravity driven due to the Tasmanian dams being on a much higher level than Victoria.

In a simple engineering process with materials readily available, a pipeline across Bass Straight could easily become a reality in less than two years.

To date, the debacle over supplying Melbourne and other Victorian towns with water has taken up too much of the taxpayers resouces by uninformed politicians trying to point-score while fumbling this problem through.  This is equivalent to the seeming out of sight problem of continuing to allow flailing mining company BHP Billiton to continue draining the Great Artesian Basin, while pastoralists and small communities in Australia are on rashions.

The Australian Senate has now sent an unequivocal message to Kevin Rudd that the North-South Pipeline, which will send 75 billion litres of water a year to Melbourne from the Murray Darling, must be stopped. (SA Liberal Senator, Simon Birmingham).

Labor has steadfastly opposed every effort made by the Liberal Party to stop the North-South Pipeline being built.  Throughout this debate only Kevin Rudd or John Brumby have ever had the power to stop the senseless waste of building such a futile pipeline. 

The Liberal amendment moved to the final passage of the Water Amendment Bill 2008, supported by the Nationals, Greens and Independents, to immediately prohibit construction of the pipeline, the extraction of water for the pipeline, ensure commitments of State Governments under the Living Murray Initiative are honoured and deliver emergency relief funding to the communities of the Lower Lakes. 

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, said  “South Australians are not suckers and won’t buy Labor’s spin on the absurd North-South pipeline. It is very clear that the idea is bad for SA, bad for Victoria and bad for the entire Basin,” she said.

See also: The Plutonic Waters of the Great Artesian Basin (PDF)

See also: The Stolen Water